Music Theory 4 -- Dr. Gerardo Dirié
Suggestions for your Study Journal.
You can choose to listen to some or all of the pieces, in solitude or in company. People listen in different ways and a brief exchange of impressions after a listening can inform us, give us more precision, detail, and depth in understanding what we have just experienced. It can also expand our vocabulary, and with it we can unlock or enhance our perception.
You may choose to listen while following the score or not, or try one way after the other. For a more in-depth experience, do listen to these pieces several times.
Consider that in your act of listening, your mind is dealing with processing your experience of a particular music, and that such music is at the same time the expression of the composer's experience. So, as much as parallel processing allows, you may try to keep track (mentally or in your notes) of what the composers seem to be trying to do:
as well as keeping track of how you are reacting to these realizations.
What are the favorite moments in the piece? (both for you and for the composer —those are moments in which composers seems to have invested most of their attention and care).
How do you think each piece could serve to argue that a specific composer is continuing a practice or tradition or is creating 'against the grain' —reacting against a tradition and presenting something deliberately new, or how important or relevant this might be for the experiencing of the given piece?
In writing your comments, you are encouraged to use a personal style, while keeping your English clear and correct. Every time that you need precision in your data, check them first on reference publications (web and beyond). The writing you do here is for your journal. This is not stuff you write for your teacher, it is something you write with care and attention to yourself. The teacher will look for sufficient evidence of your effort, care, curiosity, and responsibility in learning what can be learned from listening and reflecting on these works.
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