Mccrobie-Conducting Exit

Dance of the Hours composed by Amilcare Ponchielli’s from his opera La Gioconda takes us on a journey through the hours of the day. We will be reviewing three versions of this composition where the ballet through dance and costume, the orchestra through music, and staging or film techniques assist in representing the hours in a day (dawn, morning, twilight and night). These three previously recorded versions in review are in the forms of classical, modern, and Disney’s Fantasia version of the ballet.

This composition consists of three movements of which we will further examine movement II, Adagio Cantabile. This movement is placed in high contrast with the other two, particularly in tempo.

Beginning solely by a haut instrument, Susato successfully conveyed a bright sonority to the first dance [Susato, Three dances. 0:00-0.06]. Added percussion instrument at the seventh second, the music was given its first touch to be vivid and plump. It was performed by outdoor woodwind bands including tabor, cornetto, sackbut, shawn, and tambourine. Though there are three dances contained in Susato’s work, and dances flowed from one another, it is not hard to distinguish because of their clearly full-stops between each part. Three dances, composed during Renaissance period(1551) by Susato, is a three rondes music in binary form(A-A-B-B). Its repeated melodies were played by permeant improvisers at that time to help enrich the music with colors

The third piece, “Danza del trigo” and “Danza final” from the ballet Estancia, by Alberto Ginastera created quite a few pictures in imagination. What started as a soft and

Death is final, sudden and yet eternal it yawns before and behind us all. In “The Death of

By biological logic, we human beings will face death sooner or later in our life and death has its very own ways to approach us - a sudden deadly strike, a critical sickness, a tragic accident, a prolonged endurance of brutal treatment, or just an aging biological end. To deal with the prospect of death come different passive or active reactions; some may be scared and anxious to see death, some try to run away from it, and some by their own choice make death come faster. But Viktor Frankl, through his work Man’s Search for Meaning, and Bryan Doyle; in his essay “His Last Game” show us choices to confront the death, bring it to our deepest feelings, meaningful satisfaction. To me, the spirit of the prisoners at deadly concentration camps, Frankl’s Logotherapy theory of “. . . striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man.” (99), as well as the calmness of Doyle’s brother on his last ride, like an awaken bell, remind us of how precious life is, how we should find the significance in every act of living, determine to live a meaningful life at any circumstances; hence, when death comes, we can accept it without anxiety nor regrets.

In the play “everyman” death is depicted as something that is terribly feared as no one seemed ready for it, death is perceived as something that takes one away from the pleasures of this world.

When faced with the inevitable fate of death, the reaction of the population is very different because of their relation to life. Some men did not stop for death; they “hurried to and from” grinding their teeth in anger, which indicated their frustration in their inability to change the inevitable. Some “hid their eyes and wept” because of their unwillingness to accept the end while others rested “Their chins upon their clinched hands.” The latter watched their world fall apart bravely and smiled at their fate.

The author’s diction makes the reader feel that death ca be defeated. For example, death has been called “mighty and dreadful” but the author shows that it is not more than a “short sleep” where men go for the “rest of their bones.” The general idea of death is frightful and scary, but the reader is told that it’s only a short phase everyone goes through. It’s an opportunity for men to separate their soul and physical body. In

The play Everyman may have been written many years ago, but its lessons are still relevant today. Generally, the facts of death are very traumatizing and in fact unthinkable. This leads the modern day Everyman to ignore its significance, dying without acknowledging or reflecting on their lives here on earth. It is based on this fact that this paper aims to show the position of the author of the play “Everyman” regarding death.

He creates this dance-like feel in a variety of ways. Firstly, the 2/4 time signature makes the music feel upbeat compared to the 4/4 time signature of the rest of the piece. Secondly, the sforzando accent on the first beat of every bar drives the music onwards. Also the catchy, short and rhythmic melody is lively and metronomic. Finally the fiddle-like manner in which the violins play creates a sense of a dance. There are unexpected changes and dramatic dynamic changes throughout the trio which are both romantic qualities. The fact that this movement moves seamlessly into the next is also romantic.

When looking at the Dances from the Baroque period, the music were composed in a simple style and its texture was determined by the complexity of the choreography and the importance of the event in which it were to be presented. The music was also homophonic with simple melody lines and clear phrase structure and rhythms. This eventually resulted in composers writing dance music intended to be heard in a formal concert setting. Even though composers created a division to instrumental music it was almost indistinguishable from the music used to accompany dancing since the rhythms and structures were still obvious. Because these pieces lack dancing or singing, the composition and performance of many phrases rely on arresting departures from customary

Following the strings intro is a beautiful recorder duet adding to the tenderness and gentleness of the piece. The two recorder parts are very close to each other sometimes moving apart from unison ever so slightly so as to get an effect that the two are being interwoven forming a long chord or rope, perhaps signifying that life does not end with death but only begins. It is not a sad piece written for a funeral, it is instead more empathetic and soothing, reminding us that death of a loved one is painful for us but for the one who has died, it is only the beginning. After the introductory sonatina there is a 4 part chorus reminding us that it is God’s choosing when we should go and that the time of his choosing is always best.

The pattern of the song has a beat that repeats itself at a fixed rate. In addition to the fixed rate, the song has an accent where one beat is emphasized and this can be heard by the increased volume of that specific note. Towards the end of the song, the melodic contour of the song can be described as a descending melodic contour as the pitches descend from high to low. This is done by the artist holding out their voices for a lengthened amount of time. Furthermore, the phonic structure of this piece can be described as a monophonic piece. Monophony means that the performers play the same pitches with the same rhythms. Even though the song incompasses a wide varitey of instruments, the rhythm of the song stays relatively the same Another important aspect of the song is the dynamics. The beginning of the song can be classified as a crescendo because of the increased musical sound from the instruments, however, towards the end there is a decrescendo as the volume falls off and the artists holds on and extends the last note. The crescendo in the beginning of the song is interesting to note because the song starts off acapella and gradually the volume begins to increase when the first musical instrument comes into play. Last but not least, this piece of music contains a lot of repetition. The vocal repetition of the songs title serves as a

“And our sons go, when they are twenty, and they don’t want tears, because if they die, they die inflamed and happy” (2). In Luigi Pirandello’s “War”, the fat man opens up our understanding of fallen heroes, causing us to reconsider how we view death. The arrival of a woman and her husband on the night express, followed by the arrival of a fat man, sparks a conversation between the passengers regarding the recruitment of their sons in the military. While the other passengers are mourning over the situation, the fat man addresses it from an optimistic view, persuading many others to follow. The woman, however, asks the heartbreaking question “then…is your son really dead?”, causing him to break down into tears. Through the use of dialogue, conflict and detail, Luigi Pirandello’s “War” demonstrates that due to judgment, attempts to neglect reality results in crushed dreams.