week 8 assignment-music

Humanities

1- Are forms strictly adhered to? For the classical era we spent a good amount of time in the powerpoint and in the book discussing forms, and the classical era was all about structure. So, the answer to this is yes- forms are extremely important. To go a step further you may want to list the important forms we covered, and just know their structures (Sonata, Aria, Minuet and Trio and Rondo); in the Romantic Era the forms are loosely followed, but structure doesn’t concern these composers as much; finally, in the 20th Century composers experiment with everything from tonality to forms.

2- Important composers of each era- The book and powerpoint lists this out in a fairly straight forward manner, so you should get a pretty comprehensive list. You could also look at the composers from the list below the chart and just determine which era each of them belongs in to fill out the chart.

When it comes to what makes each composer important, this should be just one or two sentence (or phrases since it is your review chart, you can fill it out however is helpful for you) about what they do for music. So, with Mozart is really is the quintessential classical composer, perfecting forms and the genres of the time. If we look at Franz Schubert, he is famous for his art songs (and this is what the powerpoint and book focus on for him as well), while Hector Berlioz is known for his symphonic works and orchestrations. Schoenberg is the crazy guy (ok that’s my opinion) who invented atonality and a completely different way of composing.

Now…things you may now know about me…I am a huge nerd (ok, that is probably not a secret), but one fun fact is I listen to podcasts a lot while I am traveling. I listened to an episode of “Stuff you should know” yesterday that I thought you all would find interesting as it pertains to this class and to you in your daily life. The podcast was on censorship of music, specifically a movement in the 80’s and early 90’s involving parental guidelines in music. Some of us remember this, and some of us don’t, but we should be aware of it as it affects art and what is available to us. So…I have come up with an extra credit assignment, which will be worth 10 points. Here it is:

Listen to the podcast episode of “Stuff you should know” called “Was the PMRC censorship in disguise?” and write me a two paragraph response in reaction to the information given. I’d like to know what you think about censorship of art after listening to the podcast. What do you think about the notion that the PMRC really wasn’t just about censorship of music? Is censorship something that should be the responsibility of parents, or does society have a responsibility as well? This is your chance, to talk about what you think. You may send your two paragraph responses in an email (don’t worry about giving an attachment, just send it in the body of an email). Here is the link: https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/was-th…