Aaron Copland How We Listen Summary

2. Yes, I do find that the Appalachian Spring excerpt by Copland has a more "accessible" sound than some of the other twentieth century works we have listened to. The piece has a very peaceful and majestic tone to it. There are no drastic changes in pitches and find its rather soothing to listen to. Copland 's music might appeal to a listener more so than Schoenberg 's music because as mentioned, there aren 't any drastic changes when it comes to pitches. Also, Schoenberg uses sprechstimme which is a vocal melody that was spoken rather than sung on exact pitches and in

Aaron Copland is a twentieth century American composer, teacher, and conductor. Schuman (1980), refers to Copland as the “Dean of American Composers”, which he attributes to his stylistic contributions to American culture including film. His works includes songs, chamber music, ballets, theater, symphony orchestra, solos, and chorus. Copland’s approach to composing included twelve-tone, a basic exhibition of serialism. Crawford & Hamberlin (2013), describe this style as organizing twelve pitches of the chromatic scale into a unique pattern. This method expressed a way of organizing notes freely, without focusing on a key center. To non-musical ears, the atonality heard is interpreted as strange, exotic, or in some cases esthetically pleasing. Copland’s musical influence includes his time in Paris during the 1920’s with Stravinsky, a Russian Nationalist. Stravinsky’s style was inclusive of traditional Russian folk music, evident in his ballet Petrushka (Navarro 2011).

Aaron Copland was a conductor, teacher, writer and composer, he was born Nov.14,1900 in Brooklyn, New York. Aaron is the youngest of 5 children's. Copland older sister gave him lessons on the piano which he had developed an interest for. After graduating high school Copland furthered his lessons in music and studied at the American Conservation in Fontainebleau where he had a French teacher named Nadia Boulanger. He had spent the final years of his life living in New York. Copland died in December 2, 1990 in New York, New York. Copland was remembered as someone who encouraged composers to find their voice, no matter the style just as him hisself did.

In the nineteenth paragraph, Dillard use more imagery and refrainment from using periods continues the tone of awed appreciation. As she and Rahm were flying, they “...dove at the snow headlong like suicides; we jerked up, down...so..we left our hearts, stomachs, and lungs behind.” The lack of periods in the sentence forces the reader move faster, therefore experiencing the erratic movements of the plane. Her tone of awed appreciation is continued because now she is experiencing the ride for herself. Through the use of this imagery, the audience is able to understand how watching the plane and riding the plane juxtapose to each other, since watching is much more peaceful and smooth.

Aaron Copland was one of the foremost composers in the twentieth century. Copland was born on November 14,1900 in Brooklyn,New York. On December 2,1990 at age 90 he past away in New York city. His parents were jewish and european descendants and he was the youngest of five children. At the age eleven he developed an interest for the piano. one of his older sisters taught him to play for a while then a neighborhood teacher began giving him lessons. “Copland later studied under Rubin Goldmark in manhattan and regularly attended classical music performances. He decided he wanted to be a composer at the age of fifteen. He began studying music theory while in high school in 1917.

Growing up on the streets of New York made Copland independent, as his music conveys. He revealed a great interest in music during his early life, composing songs when he was only eight years old (“UXL Biographies”1). Composing at this young age was already a sign of a true gift. Copland’s family had already invested a significant amount of money in the four older children with less than stellar results (“UXL Biographies”1). Copeland’s siblings all took after music for a hobby, but his talent was unmatched. His parents finally paid for private piano lessons with Leopold Wolfsohn when he turned 13 (“UXL Biographies” 1). Short after that he attended Boys’ High School in Brooklyn, where he took music theory classes with Rubin Goldmark for the next four years (“Encyclopedia of World Biography” 1). Goldmark was a very well-known educator in Brooklyn which is why George Gershwin, another great American composer, also studied with Goldmark (“Newsmakers” 1). The teacher of Copland not only taught one, but two, amazing composers, artists, and musicians. In 1924 Copland went to France to study at The

the two works both tend to return to a main musical theme. The both tend to use ornamentation in there melodies. Copland tends to limit the range of the instruments in both pieces. I think he did that to help portray a more wild west American image.

He does not create scores with orthodox musical methods and his music can be unpleasant or even irritating to some; yet by using a technological process, he reveals a naturally occurring acoustic phenomena and demonstrates it an unforgettable physical form. In the simplest way one could imagine (play-record-play-re-record-repeat), Lucier successfully guides the audience to pay attention to listening itself, to sound itself, to the space that we stand in, to the effect that the surrounding environment may have upon us. Other composers may deliver emotions or opinions through their works, but Lucier manages to erase all these subjective judgements, triggers a self-reflecting thinking process and initiate a borderless experience that all audience shared

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on chapter titled “Do You Hear What I Hear?” by Pratricia Edward and Jennifer Turner. In reference to your questions, I thought the authors of this chapter had a better answer to begin the conversation by stating, “…every parent has his or her own story to tell. Thus, parents “stories” are the narratives gained from open-ended conversations and/or interview between teachers and parents” (Dantas & Manyak, 2010, p. 141). This answers your first question because they include all parents in the statement, under the defining the parent story approach section of the chapter, although this chapter is dedicated to African American parents.

Travels to Italy, Austria, and Germany rounded out Copland's musical education. During his stay in Paris, Copland began writing musical critiques, the first on Gabriel Fauré, which helped spread his fame and stature in the music community.

It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang, that is so often so stimulating to a composer – I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise.... And there I suddenly heard, and even saw on paper – the complete construction of the Rhapsody, from beginning to end. No new themes came to me, but I worked on the thematic material already in my mind and tried to conceive the composition as a whole. I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness. By the time I reached Boston I had a definite plot of the piece, as distinguished from its actual

Most fascinating thought about listening to all contemporary pieces, especially William Kraft’s compositions, is attitude.

In the music philosophy paper I wrote, I was in a bystander position that I was uninvolved non-participant observer. I supported the statements with evidences and therefore stating facts. The evidences in the essay were deductive. In the essay, I assumed that praxialism is the most appropriate philosophy for music education in the present day. Praxialism, in a musical context, is to listen and perform the work in order to provide a productive activity for life, which means one must understand theory through listening and participating in the making of music (musicing.) Elliott believed that there are three dimensions in music: musicer, music, and musicing. The “musicer” is the person who makes music;

A person’s emotional link to music is often used as an interpretation to make conclusions about the piece.

There is much more to music than what the average ear hears. Music is a form of art which can tell a story on behalf of the culture it comes from. In Sergio Mendes’ piece, “Magdalenha”, it appears to be a piece in which people gather around to celebrate an occasion. Now I use the world celebrate loosely because I am not familiar with the cultural background. This piece could be a religious gathering, a mourning of life, or simply a party. It is through the ethnomusicologist’s tool box that we can gain a better understanding of the piece even if that gained knowledge is about the music itself and not the culture behind it.