Assignment 2
The task for this Assignment was to create a Madrigal for a mixed choir. I chose the first text from my study folder, as it was the longest one and I wanted to work on something more challenging where I could use the skills I gained over the last course unit. The arrangement of the text, and especially the fact, that each line has 10 syllables, made it easier to reuse musical material. As I didn’t want the piece to be too repetitive either, I parted the text in half and reused musical material at the start of the fourth line. Furthermore, to keep it interesting for the performers I also switched the voices around. For the first part, the soprano and bass have the leading voice, which I left to the Alto and Tenors for the second half. Within the last four bars of each phrase all voices become equally important.
Comparing the course work to the learning outcomes:
Manipulate Harmonic Progressins to suit your own tase:
A good demonstration for this Learning Outcome is the 5th project with the exercise “IV-I- chord progression”. The aim for this exercise, was to drag out this progression as long as possible. I wasn’t quite sure how much I was allowed to move away from notes building the 4th chord. Nonetheless, at the end I had the impression, that it suited the task rather well.
Compose Accompaniments for songs and show you understand the requirements of word-setting
The best example to cover this point, would probably be project 6. Especially for commercials, understandable word-setting is hugely important. Within all three examples, I placed the, in my opinion, most important parts of the pieces (mostly the brand name) for all voices at the same time. An exception here would be the first piece “Rainbow Candy”, where the second Bass sings an accompaniment.
Write more confidently to work within some contemporary styles, and compose for specific commercial and media needs
Project 6 is really well suited for this learning outcome as well. As already written in my Reflection in the Learning Log, I highly enjoyed working on this exercise. Trying to keep them simply structured, as well as creating three different slogans was still quite a challenge. It really helped me to get some ideas from already existing commercial jingles.
Write a critical review on a composer or compositional technique
This is the task for the sixth Assignment, when thinking about a compositional technique, the first thing that came to my mind was Schönberg’s 12-tone technique, although, as I have already covered this topic several times over my study progress, I tried to look out for another technique. As I am really interested in film – music I would like to write about the Leitmotif technique, which is a short musical theme linked to a character or object within a film/play.
Overall, in comparison to others, this was a rather short, yet still very challenging course unit. I found it slightly difficult to find enough material to listen to for my Listening Log. I mostly enjoyed working on the advert-jingles as well as the research point about Toch and Tormis.
Dianas Learning Log 