Chapter 2 The Elements and Materials of Music

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Chapter 2 The Elements and Materials of Music

• Music is the most abstract of the arts
• It moves through time - it requires developing
  the ability to remember what you have heard
• Through repeated hearings to get the full impact
  of its message

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Elements

• Rhythm deals with time and its division
• Long and short sounds/silences (ex. 2.1) p.20
• notation
• Tempo deals with the speed that the beat moves
• various terms used to describe fast/slow tempo
• Meter describes the grouping of the beat
• Measures, bar lines, meter signatures

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Elements (2)

• Pitch
• Describes the high low of sounds
• Frequency of vibration
• Melody
• A linear succession of pitches organized
  rhythmically to express a musical idea
• Moves by intervals of step/skip/same (ex.2.4
  2.5) p.23

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Elements (3)

• Texture
• Monophonic
• Single, unaccompanied melodic line
• Polyphonic
• Two or more independent melodic lines woven to
  make harmony
• Homophonic
• Single melodic line with chordal harmonic
  accompaniment

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Elements (4)

• Harmony
• Created when two or more pitches are sounded
  simultaneously
• Vertical chords or weaving together melodic lines
• Modality/Tonality
• Systems where the organization is based on a
  scale pattern or central tone
• Church modes, major/minor scales
• Consonance/dissonance
• Atonality

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Elements (5)

• Dynamics
• Six levels of relative loudness/softness
• Gradual changes
• Timbre (Tone Color)
• Families of instruments
• Form
• Sectional forms (theme variation or repetition
  and contrast)

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End.chapter 2

• Thus ends the discussion of
• CHAPTER TWO

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Next Time

• Ch. 1 2
• review for test . . .