Prof: I do want to talk about chords.
Last time we worked through this idea of the scale and how
you can build triads on each of the members of the scale.
And we talked about a triad being a configuration of three
pitches where you take the first, the third and the fifth.
The first of the triad--this is a term that we'll be going over
today--is called the what?
The root of the triad so if we have >
C, E, G, the C is the root of the triad.
The lowest note of this aggregate of three is the root
of the triad.
So we can build triads on each of the members of the scale,
and we said that some of these chords tend to be used a lot
more than others, that the tonic (I) is very
important, the dominant (V) is important,
the sub-dominant right next to and below the dominant is
important, and we're going to be talking
about the VI chord today.
We could give that a name.
We could call it the sub-mediant but that's probably
getting too technical.
We'll just call it the VI chord.
So we've got a I chord built on the first degree of the scale,
a V chord built on the fifth degree of the scale,
a IV chord built on the--a IV chord built on the fourth
degree, and a VI chord built on the
sixth degree.
Now I had an interesting discussion in section this past
week and a couple of really good questions were asked.
I started by saying, "Could you come up with
any kind of-- well, you tell me in fifty
words or less what I said in lecture yesterday about harmony.
How does harmony work?
Can you come up with a visual image of how harmony
works?"
So we tried out a couple of things.
One of the things that we discussed was this type of
imagery here where you have vertically these pillars,
if you will, or we could even call--
the more I sort of looked at this--sort of call them tree
trunks almost.
And these tree trunks were the chords and at the base of each
of these chords at least conceptually,
theoretically, is this thing called the root.
So I like this tree metaphor here.
So we've got the root here of the--and then the trunk and then
up above, of course, this florid canopy would
musically be the what?
The melody. Okay.
So we might think about that.
Now in the course of this, a student asked a very good
question that I should have pointed out a long time ago,
and that is: when an orchestra plays or an
ensemble plays and they're looking at their music and
they're reading their music, do they play a chord?
Does the violin play a chord and are the trumpets--each
trumpet playing a chord and the viola--is it playing a chord?
What do you think?
No.
It's just playing one note--one note of a chord.
And once again we, our ears, hear this aggregate
of sound and then we say, "Oh, it's got that,
that, that, that," and we extrapolate out of that
information that it is this particular chord.
But if you were to look at what the YSO has on its stands
nobody's playing the chord.
They're just playing individual notes that all together form a
chord.
And we pointed out, however, that one individual
has a-- the music that has all of these
parts on it-- and that, of course,
is the conductor who has the full conducting score--
the full score--in front of him or her.
So that was one interesting question that came up,
so keep this in mind if you're wondering about this idea of
chords.
So we could say this is the root, maybe this is the third
and that's the fifth.
These other instruments are filling in these things at
various spots to produce this aggregate of the chord.
Supposing this--we mentioned this also, this idea--supposing
we had other things kind of running around there.
Without those other things running around we would have a
good sort of model of homophonic texture, sort of block chords
changing in that fashion.
If you put in other little strands of melody,
it changes it more toward polyphonic texture.
Let's review another point and I'll get to a second question
that was asked.
Why do we have to change chords?
We talked about this last time.
Why do we change chords?
Yeah.
Student: >
Melody?
Prof: Because the melody changes and not all harmonies
are concordant with every note.
Someone asked me, "Well, why are some notes
consonant and why are other notes dissonant?"
And the answer has to do with ratios and string sizes and
lengths of pipe and things like that,
but generally speaking, pitches that are right next to
each other-- very close to each other--are
dissonant.
If you get a highly irrational ratio like nine to eight,
which is the whole tone, or seventeen or eighteen to
seventeen-- which, just depending upon your
internal tuning, is the half step--those
irrational ratios are very dissonant,
>
or >
that kind of sound, but if you allow a little space
in there-- Let's say you go to a
three-to-two ratio or a six-to-five--
even a six-to-five ratio, it gets more consonant.
Let's see how this would play out.
Here for example we have the pitch C and either note above or
below it is dissonant.
These are very close together.
Now let's play this on the piano.
So here is a C.
>
If I play the D above it, >
it's dissonant, >
the D below it, it's dissonant,
but let's say I go down to the A below it, <<plays
piano>>
allowing a little separation between the two pitches now.
>
What about that?
Consonant or dissonant?
Sounds a lot better.
What about this, now going down to the G against
the C?
>
Yeah, it sounds fine, >
sounds well, kind of bland or revving in
neutral there.
What about this?
>
Yeah, it sounds sort of nice.
What about this?
>
Yeah, not so much, but if you think about it--so
it's not that--if you--it's not that we're allowing even more
space here.
What we've done is taken this pitch and played it all the way
down an octave below it so we're actually getting back to this
configuration of the pitch right next to it,
and we could--then of course we could go down one more step
>
and we would get the octave, which is a duplication of
two-to-one.
So that's a very wide sort of ratio there.
So that's something to think about.
The closer these pitches are together, the more likely they
are to be dissonant--and the desire to have some space added
there.
Questions about that?
Okay.
Let's go on now to talk about chord progression.
Anybody want to do--what's your understanding of what a chord
progression is?
If I said "chord progression"--I think we
have that term up on the board today.
What is a chord progression?
I--let's see.
Are you going to?
Yeah.
Fire away.
Student: >
Prof: Nice and loud, a little bit louder.
I couldn't hear.
Student: A sequence of chords that sound good together?
Prof: Okay.
Good.
Excellent.
A sequence of chords that sound good together,
kind of make sense together; we could say that sort of march
along in a purposeful fashion.
>
--that kind of make sense together.
All right?
They seem to be going somewhere and there's this sort of force
of pull or gravity in music having to do with some chords
wanting to go to other chords.
So we've got a chord progression.
We've talked about the root of the triad.
>
The root of the triad is the bottom-most pitch of that triad.
>
Supposing we didn't go >
C, E, G, but we decided to start with the
>
E, G and then put the C up on top, >
C, E, G, C.
Well, that'd be what's called a chord inversion.
We're not going to get into that 'cause that takes us into
heavy-duty music theory, but it's--if we don't have root
position then we've got some other note of the triad in the
bass, and we've got some kind of
chord inversion, so that's what that particular
term means up there.
What are we going to do to hear these chords?
How do we hear chord progressions?
How do we hear harmony?
What are we listening for again?
Obviously, we've talked about it again and again and again.
We're going to be listening for the bass.
Okay?
And all of our musical experience tells us to listen to
melody; melody's beautiful--that's what
we want to hear, but now to get a sense of
harmony we're going to listen to the bass.
And we said last time we want to do two things.
We want to figure out if the harmony is changing,
and if it is changing whether it's changing at a regular or
irregular rate.
By regular rate we mean that the amount of time that each
chord holds is exactly the same; every chord holds for the same
length of time.
If one chord holds twice as long or only half as long,
then we have an irregular harmonic change--irregular rate
of harmonic change.
So let's begin with our first example here this morning.
It's from Richard Wagner.
It's the beginning of his Ring cycle and we're
going to listen to this.
Well, how do we hear the bass?
How do we tell if the harmony is changing?
What I do is try to sing the bass.
I don't know whether it's easier for gentlemen or not
because our voices are sort of in the bass,
but maybe this is payback time since ladies are always singing
the melody.
So we'll focus on the bass and we'll try to sing the bass,
and if we find that in singing the bass our voice is not
changing, probably the harmony hasn't
changed.
If we have to sing a different pitch, then probably the harmony
has changed.
So let's try that as an initial modus operandi here and we'll
see how it works.
So here's an example from Wagner.
>
See if you can find the pitch.
Sing it.
I want to hear the sound.
Louder, please.
>
Did it change? No.
He just keeps that same E-flat chord for about six minutes at
the beginning of the Overture to Rheingold,
and on the basis of that you know there's going to be a very
long opera.
If he's going to sit there on one chord for that amount of
time, it's going to go on for a long period of time.
Okay.
Let's listen to an example from the realm of pop music this
time.
What about this one?
Is it changing?
I think this is Dave Matthews Band.
What about this one?
See if you can sing the pitch.
>
Sing it.
>
What about that one?
Did it change?
No.
So that one didn't change either.
We're going to have some that change, and we're going to work
through this progressively in just a moment.
I want to make one other point before we launch into that,
and that is the following: that composers use the rate of
harmonic change-- whether it's changing or not
changing-- to sort of make us feel
different ways about the music that we are listening to.
It gives a sense of what this music is all--
really all about and since, as we were saying,
so much classical music doesn't have a text with it we've got to
have some markers in there to know what the composer is trying
to communicate to us.
Here's a famous example from Mozart's G Minor Symphony.
>
And so on.
So if I separated this noodling here, <<plays
piano>>
which is just a kind of arpeggio <<plays
music>>
patterning of the chord and just have the chord stay there--
>
All right.
So those are the chords underneath.
You notice at the beginning >
one-two, two-two, three-two, four-two,
one-two, two-two, three-two, four-two.
At the beginning <<plays piano>>
these chords are holding for four measures or a total of
eight beats.
Then as it goes on, >
what happens here?
>
Change, change, change, change--changing on
every beat--then <<plays piano>>
change, change, change, change,
change.
Then we're getting two changes per beat.
So what's happened to the rate of harmonic change here?
Is it regular or irregular?
Students: Irregular.
Prof: Highly irregular, and what is happening to it?
It's getting faster and faster and faster.
So here in the G Minor Symphony we feel as--
oh, it's so full of tension, angst,
anxiety, perhaps passion, it's driving somewhere,
and one of the things that's driving it is its accelerating
rate of harmonic change.
The amount of time that each chord is holding is getting
shorter and shorter and shorter as we drive into that cadence.
Now the cadence is >
--cadence is simply the end of a musical phrase,
particularly in this case the end of a chord progression,
where we are at a point of arrival;
the cadence brings us to a point of arrival.
So that's a piece of Mozart.
Let's turn to a piece of Beethoven now,
his Symphony number Six, the Pastoral Symphony.
Let's listen to just a bit of it.
>
Can you pick out the bass?
Can you sing the bass pitch?
Now we can.
>
Prof: Well, it's difficult;
it's not easy.
Can you pick out the--no.
I was having trouble picking out the bass.
They're so--sometimes you can do it, and sometimes you can't
do it.
We're going to focus now on some passages where we can do
it, and we're going to see how Beethoven is setting up some
chord progressions here.
So here we've got--let's see.
We've got some chords set out and we're going to--
we've got some chords set out here and we're in the key of C
at this point, and we're going to hear
Beethoven go to a tonic chord, then a sub-dominant chord,
then a tonic chord, then a dominant chord and so on.
We're just going to watch and listen to--maybe even sing along
with--the bass as he changes chords.
>
And let's work--we'll hear that again, but as you can see
>
and then hold on that >
and then the changes came a little bit faster and faster.
So let's listen to that again.
And we will then get over to here, where he's sitting on the
tonic chord, and we want to see how long he's going to hold this
tonic chord.
Okay?
>
Irregular, huh, because we held a long time
there.
Now, moving faster.
>
Sing.
>
Sing with me.
>
Okay.
So he's up to something here with this rate of harmonic
change.
We almost fell asleep on that tonic chord.
He's doing the opposite of what Mozart did.
He's trying to relax us here by slowing down the rate of
harmonic change here.
That held for about thirty seconds, that tonic chord.
Almost all classical music involves irregular rates of
harmonic change, a point I think will become
apparent later on, but that is perhaps why this is
the Pastoral Symphony-- this idea of being relaxed,
being outdoors among the-- amidst nature and being in a
very relaxed sort of state of mind.
The rate of harmonic change has slowed down considerably here.
Okay.
Now for the rest of the session today,
what I'd like to do is take examples from the realm of pop
music and use them as paradigms for what happens in the world of
classical music.
Why would I do that?
Why, when dealing with harmony and bass lines,
do I want to start by focusing on popular music and then apply
those principles to classical music?
What does pop music do for us that's very helpful?
Marcus?
Student: It's, like, very regular.
Prof: Okay.
It's not like; it is very regular,
Marcus.
I'm always telling my kids, "Don't like"--no.
It is indeed very regular--So it is indeed very
regular so that's one thing, and by regular we mean these
patterns keep repeating again and again.
So Marcus is absolutely right.
That's the big-ticket item--it's regular.
It oftentimes repeats and it can be symmetrical in that
sense.
Another observation?
Roger?
Student: >
Prof: Okay.
Yeah.
It's--that's another point.
It's more obvious because there are probably fewer lines there,
so that you can focus on the primary line,
the basic line--the bass line.
Yeah.
So there's--it's probably simpler in that sense.
Any other observations?
Well, here's one other that you might not have thought of,
and that is that most of the chords in rock music in
particular tend to be root-position chords,
and for that reason they're easier to hear.
When you start getting inversion, "what note is
it, what chord is it," that obfuscates the issue.
So because so much popular music and particularly rock
music has those chords in root position we can track them more
readily.
And then finally we could add that--
the idea that maybe with a lot of electronic basses and things
like that that they play-- they tend to play the bass just
louder.
Okay?
So all of these factors, particularly the idea of
regularity and repetition.
So let's take a couple of examples here.
Okay. I think we have something.
I've chosen something called Badly Drawn Boy.
I had this in my collection.
Anybody ever heard of this?
Is--okay.
One, two.
This is not--okay, three.
So this is--is that--is it "Badly Drawn Boys"
or "Boy"?
Boy. What? Singular. Okay.
We're going to hear just a few seconds of this.
See if you can determine how many chords we have
here--whether we have a chord change.
If so, how many chords are involved in this chord change
and are they changing at a regular or irregular rate?
>
What about that?
Regular or irregular?
Student: Is it regular?
Prof: Regular, yeah.
>
And then we go on to the next one.
And how many chords were involved there?
Difference of opinion.
So how many--well, let's hear it again.
>
So two, yeah. Regular?
Student: >
Prof: So we have just two chords here,
just changing back and forth between two.
Here is another example: Justin Timberlake.
Sorry, but it's a good example.
Let's listen to this.
How many chords are involved?
Regular or irregular?
>
Regular or irregular?
Hmm?
How many think regular?
Raise your right hand.
Raise your left hand if you think it's irregular.
Yeah, it's regular, and with-- each chord was
holding for two beats there in duple meter.
How many chords were there altogether?
Yeah, I think there were four chords there so we had change.
Yes, there was change.
It was regular and it happened to involve four chords.
Okay.
Pop music--we've been using some pop music here.
We've talked about why we use the pop music.
Let's talk about what the difference between pop and
classical music is.
We've touched on this a little bit before but let's play with
this again.
Let's say you go home for Thanksgiving break and your
grandmother says, "What have you been doing
at Yale?"
"Well, I've been taking this course on music and we've
been studying classical music and some popular music,"
and she says, "What's the difference?
Tell me.
What's the difference between popular music and classical
music?"
How would you explain to your grandmother what the difference
is?
Maybe six, seven, eight different bullet points
here.
Who can get us started?
We've talked about some of these already,
having to do with the nature of the harmony--
that pop music tends to have simpler harmonies,
and that those harmonies tend to be more repetitious,
that they tend to have harmonies that have chords in
root position.
And here is one other thing you might not think of and then I'm
going to stop and I'm going to let you add things here.
They tend to be just triads whereas in classical music
>
we can have a triad but we can also add a seventh note with
>
one, three, five, seven, nine,
eleven, that kind of thing.
It gets more dissonant, the more notes that you add
there.
So classical music does involve more complex chords.
Okay. What else here?
Oscar.
Student: Pop music tends to have a vocal part?
Prof: Pop music tends to have a vocal part.
Why?
Student: Maybe it wants to be popular.
Prof: Well, because it wants to be popular.
>
There may be a circular argument there.
Well, okay, but if you're going to have a singer,
what's that singer going to be singing?
Student: A melody.
Prof: A melody?
Well, but classical music has melody.
We have a violinist play a melody.
If we have a singer, the singer's going to be
singing a text.
Right?
And we talked about this before--that classical music,
probably eighty-five percent of it,
does not involve a text, and that's a whole different
ballgame because then you have to communicate meaning in a
completely different sort of way.
Maybe you communicate meaning by slowing down your harmonic
motion to make us feel relaxed so that each of these--
with pop music you have--you know what the thing means
principally because of the text, but with the classical music
you've got these sort of subliminal symbols in there,
subliminal signifiers that we got to pick up on.
And we'll be talking more and more about that.
So we do have--that's a very important point that Oscar
raises there.
We've got text in pop music that tells us what this music
means.
Anything else?
Carolyn.
Student: >
Prof: Okay.
If you go to hear a symphony of mid-Beethoven,
on-- each movement will probably last fifteen minutes.
If you put on a CD, we could have-- what's the
timing on the Justin Timberlake thing there or any one of the
tracks?
Pick up the "Duke of Earl" one there.
Do they give us timings?
Okay.
I can't read it but two minutes and fifty seconds,
two minutes--this one's only two minutes, three minutes and
twenty seconds, that kind of thing.
They're short, whereas Beethoven,
as mentioned, is much longer.
What does that opportunity of length provide us?
It provides us the opportunity to be more diversified in terms
of the mood of the music.
So in classical music you can have rather wide mood swings.
Remember we had in that one piece <<plays
piano>>
and then <<plays piano>>
there was a modulation tying them together,
but those were completely different sentiments.
Usually, with a piece of popular music you get a single
ethos, a single feeling,
a single mood associated with the piece,
and the piece will tend to be shorter.
Any more that we could push on that?
Yeah.
Student: >
Prof: Okay. That's--yeah.
Most classical music is written down.
We've talked--we spent a lot of time talking about that--
the most popular music, virtually all of it--
although after the fact people try to write it down.
You can go buy a score of the Beatles,
for example--although they didn't design this initially
with music, but after the fact,
people sort of listen to it and make written--
put in written form what had originally been just an aurally
conceived artistic statement.
Anything else? Roger?
Student: >
Prof: Yeah.
Oh, so we've got the difference between acoustical instruments,
which are sort of natural wood and strings and that sort of
thing, and electronically amplified
sound in which it might be sent to a mixer or perhaps a
synthesizer that could play with those partials that we talked
about, and maybe turn a
clarinet--somebody playing at a keyboard and you want that
keyboard to sound like a trumpet,
well, you just turn a mixing board and you can get those
pitches to sound like a trumpet.
Or, for example, let's say you're Cher and
you're getting in to your early sixties and you really can't hit
that high note anymore; you can get electronically that
particular sound to be enhanced.
And let's say you can't hold that.
Let's say Pavarotti at the end of his life couldn't hold notes
as long as he could when he was recording in nineteen
seventy-eight.
Well, you can just--an engineer will just sit there and isolate
that second of sound and then give a "times three"
command and "boom," well,
look at Pavarotti hold out that note.
Well, it's the miracle of the engineer and not the singer.
So there are a lot of acoustical things and sort of
tricks of synthetic things going on in pop music.
Yeah.
Student: Well, not just the chord progression
but also the structure of the piece.
Like in popular music there's often a couple of verses and a
chorus and a bridge and you can predict each different movement
of the piece, and that's more regular than--
Prof: Couldn't say it better myself.
Say that nice and loud so everyone can hear it.
Student: The structure of a popular piece is often more
predictable in pattern and verses and bridges and choruses
whereas with classical music you really can't predict what part
of the movement you're at as well as you can with--
Prof: Right. Exactly.
It's not --and that ties in with the harmony also,
which is also a lot more predictable.
And so generally speaking what we end up with classical
music-it's much more diversified.
It's much more varied.
It's much more complex.
We've got contrapuntal lines operating in it.
It has the capacity for expansion.
It can take us through the full panoply of human emotions within
one particular composition..
And it perhaps allows the opportunity for more personal
interpretation, "exactly what does this
music mean," more personal interpretation,
because we're not tied to a text;
we're not linked in to a particular text that tells us
what it's about.
So those are just a few ideas as we pursue this.
Well, what I'd like to do now is move here to a couple of
additional pieces, and we're going to use an
example of pop music now with a three-chord chord progression.
We've heard I guess it was Badly Drawn Boy--Boys there with
a two-chord chord progression.
Now we're going to hear Beach Boys, I guess,
with a three-chord chord progression and it's going to be
sub-dominant (IV), dominant (V),
tonic (I).
Is it regular or irregular?
>
And try to sing the bass.
Can you sing that bass?
You sing it for me.
Here's the tonic.
>
Good.
Good. Louder. That's it.
>
Okay.
So that's all you got to do, and you can hear the
>
holding for twice as long as the other, so you got irregular
rate of harmonic change.
So that's I, IV, V, I.
And let's go to a little bit more of Beethoven.
We're going to go now to the last movement of his
Pastoral Symphony, and I keep hitting on the
Pastoral Symphony 'cause in two weeks--
or maybe three weeks--we're going to go hear,
I guess, the Saybrook Orchestra play the Pastoral
Symphony.
So I'm spending a little extra time on the Pastoral
Symphony here.
And the last movement opens with this sort of sound.
We have these pitches >
and all listen and then you can tell me what instrument is
playing it.
So we have those sorts of sounds <<plays
piano>>
and then another instrument will come in with <<plays
piano>>
and play that.
It's all--these are all notes of a C triad,
>
C, E, G, C, E, all notes of a C triad.
Now we happen to be in the key of F here so that means he's
starting out with the dominant, which gets us to the point that
all pieces have to end in the tonic one way or another,
but not all pieces begin with the tonic.
So this one happens to begin with a sort of dominant chord.
So this is a little bit of dominant preparation.
>
So tell me what instruments are playing here.
>
And then the strings come in.
So what was the first instrument?
Anybody pick that up, on that one playing?
On the quiz or test next week or--on Thursday--we'll give you
three--at least three plays.
Robert?
Student: Clarinet.
Prof: Clarinet.
Yes, it was a clarinet up there, nice and high,
and then another instrument came in with <<plays
piano>>.
What instrument was that?
French horn, yeah, but notice that if we
take this aggregate-- >
and we're back to that same idea of the octave,
the fifth, the fourth and the third,
sort of, so it's again sort of primordial,
this particular acoustical basis of so much of music.
So that's our dominant preparation and then the melody
starts, so let's listen to this.
Let me play it here a little bit.
>
So it has a kind of antecedent-consequent phrase
structure with the <<plays piano>>
chord.
Once we get up there, that's sort of the end of the
antecedent phrase and we have a chord change.
What we're working with here are the same chords.
We've sort of gone from the Beach Boys to Beethoven here.
We've got the same chords operating.
It's going to be a I chord, then a IV chord,
and we'll drop down to the IV chord.
Then we'll come to a V chord, to a I chord,
to a IV chord, to a V chord,
to a I chord, just as we were doing with the
Beach Boys.
We'll resuscitate Beethoven here.
>
How many of you have ever heard this before, while Lynda's
getting this set?
Let's see if we could sing it together because we're going to
do this in a different way in a second.
Let's sing >
Okay. So let's sing this.
That's the melody and we're going to sing
>
beneath--we're going to sing Beethoven's bass beneath
Beethoven's melody.
>
Okay.
This is the intro.
That's fine.
We'll listen to it.
Here comes the horn.
>
Okay.
So that's an example of a classical composer,
admittedly in a pretty straightforward situation,
using the same three-chord chord progressions we find in
the Beach Boys.
Let's enlarge this further.
Let's move to a four-chord chord progression.
We're going to switch the board.
And we're going to go to the kind of music that I grew up
with as a kid.
It's always fun.
This is Gene Chandler and the "Duke of Earl"
so we're going to listen to a little bit of it and we're going
to chart the bass here.
I'm trying to remember.
I think actually it's in the same key as Beethoven.
>
And then we'll see exactly what it is that he's doing here so
we're going to try to lock in on the bass.
Here we go.
>
So sing the bass with me.
>
So we've got four chords operating here and they're
changing regularly.
What are those four chords?
Well, we talked a little bit about this before.
Now we have what's called a VI chord and we're not moving
directly to the IV chord; we're moving to another
chord--here a VI chord, >
which happens to be a minor chord.
>
There's the IV chord >
and there's [V}-- <<plays piano>>
back to the I here.
So you sing this nice and loud for me, please.
>
There's the tonic.
Ready, go.
>
Good.
One more time.
> Louder.
>
Okay.
Now watch what happens as we continue with this I,
VI, IV, V, I progression.
Do we have a regular or irregular rate of change here?
Let's go on to the next section.
>
I, VI, IV, V, I, VI, IV, V.
So what happened in that middle section?
Yeah.
Student: >
Prof: Good. Yeah.
If we are >
and then it went on and on and on, longer, longer,
longer, and then >
but it was the same pattern.
They just elongated each measure by its same amount so we
had harmony changing on each measure,
and then in that middle section each chord was changing at the
rate of two measures.
So the whole piece, then, would be a piece
involving irregular rate of change-- the entire piece.
Okay.
So that's the "Duke of Earl" progression:
the basic I, VI, IV, V, I.
Now we'll play a passage of Mozart--a symphony by Mozart
here that he wrote at the ripe old age of nine years.
This is Mozart at age nine.
He had actually written a couple of symphonies by this
time.
This is his Symphony No.
5 in B-flat so let's listen to this.
We're just going to listen and see if anything strikes you as
interesting.
>
I think we just should keep right on going just to get the
point across.
We'll just let it run.
>
So you can sing this bass.
>
So that's Mozart using the "Duke of Earl"
harmony--not really.
This is a point I brought up in my section the other day.
There are lots of legal cases where people try to sue somebody
else for stealing a song; they try to sue them for
stealing a bass line or something like that.
You can get away--you can sue people for stealing melody.
You can never--there's a strong legal precedent for not being
able to make a claim about stolen bass,
because these basses are limited in number,
they involve rather simple harmonic progressions,
and they've been used over the centuries.
It's not as if Gene Chandler sat around here studying Mozart
symphonies.
I don't know.
Maybe he did, said, "Oh,
I like that harmonic progression.
I'm going to use that here."
No.
Everybody's been using that, sort of since time immemorial
or at least since the sixteenth century.
Now let's go on here to listen to some music of Rossini--
composer Gioachino Rossini-- coming after Mozart,
and he likes chord progressions too,
so we're going to listen to a passage of Rossini and see what
he does by way of his chord selection.
So the point of this is: once you get these kind of
progressions locked in your ears,
you go to a concert and you can begin to chart what the piece is
doing in terms of its harmony.
Yeah, you're not going to be able to hear all of it and,
indeed, you may not be able to hear most of it.
I don't hear most of it.
But there are moments, and they're moments that give
me pleasure >
when I can say, "Oh, yeah.
That's what he's doing there."
I might not know what key he's in.
I don't really care what key he's in 'cause I don't have
absolute pitch, but I can find well,
maybe it's a I, VI, IV, V, I chord progression
or a I, V, I progression or I, IV, V, I.
We--you get different kinds of patterns.
A Pachelbel bass pattern is another one.
So let's listen to a pattern that Rossini is using here in
this opera overture.
>
So the first thing we got to do is sort of lock on to the tonic.
>
And it's taking me a while.
It's taking me a while to lock on to that tonic.
I don't know.
The bass isn't as loud as in some of the pop music
>
but I think it-- >
but I think that's what the tonic is.
So don't be--don't despair if you don't initially land on the
tonic here.
It takes a while so--but I think we've got it identified.
>
All right. Let's go on.
>
So he went >.
What would you guess those two chords are?
We said this is the tonic.
>
The other one's probably going to be the dominant.
If you ever hear music rocking back and forth repeatedly
between two chords, it's probably tonic,
>
dominant, tonic, dominant.
Remember we had that even with the Strauss.
>
The timpani played that tonic, dominant, tonic,
dominant.
So if you hear two chords rocking, it's probably tonic and
dominant.
Okay.
Let's see how he expands this a little bit.
>
So what was that?
Well, that's the "Duke of Earl" passage.
Right?
So we are sitting there in Woolsey Hall with New Haven
Symphony or whatever, New York Philharmonic.
"Oh, yeah.
That's the 'Duke of Earl' passage."
So yes, it was the >
I, VI, IV, V, I progression.
All right.
Let's see what happens next.
>
Okay.
So what happened next was he then started to run that faster,
>
twice as fast as it had been before, changing rate of
harmonic pattern.
Okay?
>
What was that >?
What chord's there probably?
Daniel, what do you think?
What chord's there?
Student: Dominant.
Prof: Just dominant time, >
, going faster and faster, and then what happens?
>
Sing the tonic.
>
The end of that was all just the tonic.
He just sat there on the tonic forever.
It's a good example of sort of real time and psychological time
in music.
You knew it was time to start clapping as soon as that chord
hit that, <<plays piano>>
it stopped going back and forth, tonic,
dominant, just sitting there.
That piece is over.
The rest is just a big mud pie in your face.
Okay?
It's just >
tonic or maybe throwing an anchor overboard to bring this
ship to an end-- whatever sort of analogy or
visual imagine you want to bring to it,
but it's--the piece has ended.
Even though we are continuing to hear sound,
harmonically, psychologically,
we know we're finished when he hits that particular tonic.
Okay. I think our time is up.
I'll see you Wednesday evening.
And look for an e-mail early this afternoon about individual
help tomorrow afternoon.