MCY 131 Understanding Music – Listening Journal 2

Your listening journal assignment is to write a three to five page paper on a musical work chosen from the list below. Your paper should provide a musical analysis of your chosen piece using the established parameters designated in our course textbook and implemented in our class discussions.  If you would like to write your paper on a work not listed below, please discuss your plan with your instructors.

You have considerable flexibility regarding how you chose to approach your topic, but please develop an organized analysis that interrogates the seven elements of music and the five questions that provide the organizational foundation of our discussions: What is it? How does it work? What does it mean? What is its history? Where do we go from here?  Your paper should be written in standard academic English language style (double spaced/ 11 font). Please use appropriate citations if your chose to consult source materials (APA, MLA, or Chicago style sheets), and keep in mind that all papers will be electronically checked for plagiarism.

The paper is due on Wednesday, August 5^th.  Please submit your paper as an email attachment to my UM email address. Contact me if you have any questions regarding this assignment.

Here is the list of suggested works to study based on our recent investigations of Gateways from Part II in your textbook (Chapters 6,7,8):

Classical-period Chamber Music: any string quartet by Franz Joseph Haydn or Ludwig van Beethoven (I recommend a look at the “late” string quartets of Beethoven)

Classical-period Symphonies: Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551 (or simply the Jupiter Symphony) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Classical-period Opera: Don Giovanni (K. 527) or The Magic Flute (K. 620) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Classical-period Piano Music: Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57 (or simply the Appassionata sonata) by Ludwig van Beethoven

Music of the Atlantic Slave Trade: any relevant musical example of Candomblé

Beethoven Symphonies: Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 (or simply the Pastoral Symphony) by Ludwig van Beethoven

Programmatic Orchestral Works: A Faust Symphony in Three Character Pictures, S.108 (or simply the Faust Symphony) by Franz Liszt

Romantic Piano Music: Carnaval, Op. 9, for piano solo by Robert Schumann

Nineteenth-century Opera: The Flying Dutchman (WWV 63) or The Valkyrie (WWV 86B) by Richard Wagner

Early American Popular Music: any relevant example of early American popular music from 1800 to 1850

European Musical Nationalism: Finlandia (Op. 26) by Jean Sibelius or Peer Gynt (Op.23) by Edvard Grieg

Classical Music at Century’s End: La mer (L. 109, CD. 111) by Claude Debussy or Rapsodie espagnole by Maurice Ravel

Here is a list of suggested genres to consider based on our investigations of Gateways from Part III in your textbook (Music History during the Long Twentieth Century):

The Blues/ American Band Music/ Ragtime/ Music of the Early European Modernists/ Balinese Gamelan/ Early Jazz/ Swing/American Popular Song/ American Symphonic Nationalism/ Mexican Mariachi Music/ Country Music/ Bebop/ Classical Music and World War II/ Trinidadian Steel Pan Music/ Rock/ New Directions in Jazz/ The Classical Avant-garde/ Salsa/ Rap and Hip-Hop/ Neo-traditional Jazz/ Postmodern Classical Music/ Reggae/ and current trends today.