Music Understanders Report In!
Yes, music understanders. I don’t care if mister high and mighty spellchecker thinks it necessary to shove a wiggly red line under it, it’s a word. Lexographical iniquities aside, here’s the meat of today’s problem: I’m dumb when it comes to music theory. I have no classical training, and barely any professional teaching to speak of. I do have a basic grasp of a bunch of stuff, but that sets a pretty low bar hanging to bang into. I’ll evidence this complaining and not-quite self-loathing with an example. Take these two sections in Mahler 6, juxtaposed here sequentially (filled with long words tonight we are) one from the exposition, and one from later on:
This is one of my favorite bits in the first movement, the unexpected change in that descending sequence is ridiculously satisfying. So what’s going on here? My not terribly educated guess is the second version modulates to some related major key (such as C-major) instead of dropping all in A-minor. At least, I assume it’s in A-minor since that’s the tonic of the symphony and it’s the first theme.
Sometimes I really wish I had had a bunch of music lessons.
March 6th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Ben,
I’m struggling with the same things you are: I’m trying to “understand” classical music, and without much of a music education, it’s difficult to say more than “I like this” or “I don’t like this”. I recently bought Aaron Copland’s book “What to Listen for in Music”, as well as a couple Bernstein books. Copland’s book is really good, and even though I can’t read music, I understood a lot of what he was trying to explain. Less so in the Bernstein books, but there’s still a lot of good material that I did understand even though I felt like I was only scratching the surface of what he was explaining. All of these books are quite old, so are easy to find used, or in cheap reprints. I’ve got a review of the Copland book on my blog, if you’re curious.
Cheers,
cswingle
March 6th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
I have more or less given up on understanding the technicalities of music. I recognize key changes are critically important, but I am now content to find a passage ‘ridiculously satisfying’ and noticing a key change of some sort, but I have no need to learn that Mahler has modulated from A to C minor instead of to G as he did earlier, which is significant because C minor is related to the tonic and he has used a minor triad chord in the Dorian mode which of course represented death and despair to the ancient greeks. Or something like that.
I don’t mean to criticize - but for me, I’ve attained a level of general knowledge of the forms and history of music, and have reached the point of diminishing returns in trying to go any deeper. I still always read the booklet notes, though.
March 6th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
You are very close. The first version is in A minor. The melody descends C-B-A-E-D-C-B-A. In the second, it’s all the same notes except that second C is raised, to emulate a major key: C-B-A-E-D-C#-B-A.
Good ear!
March 8th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Aha! Thankyou very much jodru!
I’m curious, could you tell that just from listening to it or do you have a copy of the score?
Andy, I see where you are coming from, but for me understanding (or poorly attempting to understand) these nitty-gritty little musical details is absolutely fascinating. I don’t think they are necessary for the appreciation of music at all — after all, I can enjoy the section without knowing the details of it’s construction — but for me these snippets of theory are fascinating and add a layer of intrigue to it all.
cswingle, nice review. I’ll keep my eye out for the Copland book in particular. I think I remember reading a recommendation of that somewhere else as well. It’s a bit frustrating “sort of” understanding the theoretical ideas (forms, keys, dissonances, etc.) without really being able to read through a score quicker than about a measure every five minutes. For me anyway.
March 13th, 2008 at 9:45 am
I can tell by listening.
You could too, with a little practice!