Great Ideas in Western Music

Music: Great Ideas in Western Music

Concert Comparison Assignment

From week one of our class, Great Ideas in Western Music, we have relied heavily on recorded performances. Recordings have given us the opportunity to listen repeatedly to different pieces and particular sections of pieces in order to catch their peculiarities.

This kind of listening is liberating and of course helpful when you study music closely for the first time. But there are costs. The very experience of listening to a piece of music on an iPod, or watching a music video on YouTube tends to be too abstract and disembodied when compared with the live performance. The mere presence of instrumentalists or singers on stage at a live concert helps organize our experience as both listener and viewer. Not only can we identify the source of the sound, but we can also observe how musicians use their bodies in ways to communicate particular qualities of feeling: singers smile and sometimes grimace, violinists sway, clarinetists dart etc., etc., etc. In addition, we can see how conductors enact the dimension of time in a piece so that we, too, can keep track of what is going on. Equally important, we can survey how audiences behave at different kinds of live performances. Depending on the nature of the concert, the audience’s deportment, the liberty of applause, the attitude of performers, even the clothing may change. These details of the concert-going experience tell us not only about musical styles, but also about the deeply ingrained values embedded within varying cultures of concert performance.

The main purpose of your concert comparison assignment is to compare alive classical performance as opposed to a different concert, be it another type of a classical music event or a pop concert.So, to begin:

1. ATTEND TWO CONCERTS:
   1. One must be a “classical”/Western art music concert(this includes musicals, ballet, opera, etc.) Any genre in your textbook counts as Western art music!
   2. The other may be a concert genre of your choice

(Possible two-concert pairs might be: an opera and a symphony orchestra concert; a symphony orchestra concert and a pop concert; a musical and a contemporary classical music (“avant-garde”) concert; a ballet and a world music concert. There are many combinations that are possible!)

2. You must attend both concerts in the CURRENT semester. Concerts that you attended prior to this semester may not be used.

3. TAKE NOTESAT THE CONCERTS of everything you observe that has to do with the totality of your concert experience: the venue, the audience, the musicians and ABOVE ALL, the music.

4. TAKE A CONCERT PROGRAM or TAKE TWO PHOTOS OF YOURSELF WITH FULL REFERENCE TO THE CONCERT ENVIRONMENTfrom/at BOTH concerts.

5. CONDUCT A COMPARATIVE ANALYSISthat describes what the concert experience (visually AND aurally) was like in each concert in as much detail as possible. Your assignment must:

1. Explain the types of concerts attended.
2. Include the dates and locations of the concerts.
3. Describe the venues and audiences.
4. Include the names of the performers or ensembles.
5. Describe at least 2 pieces from each concert with the musical terminology (rhythm, texture, instrumentation, harmony, melody) you have been learning about in this class every week.
6. Answer: how were the two musical experiences different, and how did that difference affect YOU? What, for YOU, made the biggest difference in a live classical music performance – as opposed to a recorded one, or a non-classical one?

6. FORM
   1. Your analysismay take any discursive form you wish EXCEPT a traditional paper.
      1. Ideas include creating: a webpage or blog (WordPress, Slate), Storify story, digital story (Adobe Slate is a great web source for this),an infographic (Canva is a great web source for this), a Prezi, a short story orpoem, a newspaper column, a comic book, a Facebook page, a series of Tweets, a short film (using YouTube, PowToon, etc.), BE CREATIVE! If you are unsure about what to do, let’s talk!
   2. You must conduct your analysis in 1200 to 1500 words. You must include a Word document with your text copied/pasted so that we have your word count.
   3. Don’t forget to include your photos or scan/take a photo of your concert program!Include this evidence in your discursive form.

7. If you do not submit your assignment to Canvas by the due date you will receive a zero (0) grade for the Concert Comparison Assignment.You have 13 weeks to complete this assignment: please do not wait until the last minute to complete it. NO late assignments will be accepted.
8. The Concert Comparison rubric follows 5 and 6 above and is available on Canvas accompanying the submission of this assignment.