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I'm edu-macating these days and have nil time for blogging. May I instead offer snapshots of my academic prose?  Image credit: YouTube (GCSMeredith) The following was my initial post in a discussion of early opera for my music studies. It relates to video performances of "Tu se' morta" from Monteverdi's Orfeo, as linked to the performers' names.
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I'm edu-macating these days and have nil time for blogging. May I instead offer snapshots of my academic prose?
Pál Szinyei Merse [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
The opening notes of Claude Debussy's "Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun" launch into the first melody's antecedent phrase, played quietly by a solo flute that momentarily holds a steady note, glissandos downward to an irresolved dissonant pitch (0:04), and then steps back up to repeat the motive a second time before resolving the dissonance by landing on a consonant pitch in the consequent phrase. Additional instrumentation (a horn accompanied by harp) respond to her in a different key (0:18) and the melody is then repeated (0:44), begun again by the flute (now supported by the harmonies of other instruments), and then taken by the oboe (1:02). When the melody concludes, the woodwinds (flute, clarinet, and possibly a piccolo), violins, and horn replace the soloists to form chords that create a series of crescendos and rising pitches that seem to give way in decrescendo to a clarinet (1:29). The melody repeats again with an accompanied flute (1:35), but in variations on the original melody.
Beginning at 2:48, we change both keys and melody as the clarinet chromatically explores up and down a few times within an octave, echoed by the flute (3:01), the exchange then repeated by both in another key, before the key changes again and an oboe takes the melody (3:17). At 3:45, the melodies change again, having added the violins. What I found unique in this section was that the melodies rise in pitch before they descend, as opposed to the immediate descending of the melodies in the first section. In regard to dynamics, while the music crescendos and decrescendos between piano and mezzo-forte (3:48, 5:01)--a relatively peaceful range of volume--it conveys more presence than the quiet melodies we heard in the first section, which began as pianissimo at the beginning, and only ever crescendoed to mezzo-piano (1:24). The third section of the music is a variation on the opening section, suggesting the piece as a whole is essentially a ternary form, followed by coda conclusion (9:04) in which the harps mellow the tempo with a ritarding ostination. The violins and horns offer a final unique phrase here with their chords in parallel motion, and then they are quietly overtaken by various other instruments in a group decrescendo to the end. |
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