Musical Creators

1
Musical Creators

• Chapter 8 Notes

2
Objectives

• Identify 5 Modern American composers and
  songwriters
• Describe how these musical artists use music to
  communicate
• Identify the characteristics that make their
  works American
• Identify the creative processes and the source of
  musical ideas that these composers and arrangers
  use in the developing their music

3
The Art of Composition

• Composition the craft of putting together sounds
  to create a musical work
• exteriorizing inner feelings Aaron Copeland
• The creative process
• A struggle or a spontaneous act
• Chopin vs. Beethoven
• Andrew Lloyd Webber no clue! (doodles, etc.)
• Form a blueprint or skeleton on which a
  composition is built

4
Songwriter, Diane Warren

• The Hit Machine
• Interview (page 171)
• http//www.realsongs.com/

5
Find the Hook

• Hook the motive or grabber phrase in a song
  that often accompanies the words of the songs
  title
• Can set up a thought or can be an answer to a
  question
• Because You Loved Me
• Unbreak my Heart

6
American Masters George Gershwin

• 1898-1937
• Popular songs, Broadway musicals, concert music
• Russian-Jewish immigrants self-taught
• 19 first Broadway musical
• 30 musicals!
• Ira (older brother) wrote lyrics
• I Got Rhythm

7
An American Opera Porgy Bess

• Based on the novel, Porgy by DuBose Heyward
• Portrays the struggles of two African-Americans
  living in the segregated South in the early 1900s
• Opened October 10, 1935
• (Gershwin died of cancer in 1937) Three years
  later, the show is heralded as great.

8
Bess, You is My Woman Now

• Modulation a change in key
• pg 179

9
Profile George Gershwin

• 1898-1937
• Brooklyn, NYC
• Worked in Tin Pan Alley
• Musicians could play their songs for publishers
  and producers
• Swanee, 1st song
• Of Thee I Sing (1931) won the Pulitzer Prize
• Rhythms derived from jazz

10
Aaron Copland

• father of American Orchestral music
• 1900-1990
• Compositions borrowed heavily from American folk
  traditions and themes
• Studied in France as a young man
• French influences like Debussy
• Incorporated jazz American folk tunes

11
Appalachian Spring Coplands Gift for
Simplicity

• Ballet Appalachian Spring
• Simple melodies, etc.s
• Edward D. Andrews book The Gift to be Simple
• Shaker traditions, etc.
• Incorporated the hymn in his ballet
• http//www2.gol.com/users/quakers/simple_gifts.htm
  
• Pg 183

12
Appalachian Spring, contd

• Written for Martha Graham
• Celebrates a newly married pioneer couples
  moving into a home built for them by people in
  their community
• First performed in 1944

13
Fanfare for the Common Man

• Fanfare a short, showy tune, usually written for
  brass, played to honor important people or
  announce an important event
• Eugene Goossens collection during WWII
• Copland penned Fanfare for the Common Man
• One of the most successful of the Goossens
  collection

14
Electronic Music

• The invention of the integrated circuit
• 1960s first practical application
• Synthesizer an electronic device, usually with
  a keyboard, capable of producing sounds in almost
  any range, tone quality, and volume

15
Libby Larsen

• Born 1950
• Use of synthesizers
• Visual audible
• The Settling Years
• 19th century life, untamed West
• Comin to Town
• Beneath These Alien Stars
• A Hoopla

16
Marimba Concerto After Hampton

• Marimba idiophone much like a xylophone
• National instrument of Guatemala
• Lionel Hampton (1908-2002)
• Jazz musician
• Larsen composed her piece in 1992

17
Profile Moses George Hogan

• 1957-2003
• New Orleans, LA
• Oberlin Music Conservatory (OH)
• Julliard School of Music
• Champion of the African-American spiritual
• to continue the African-American choral
  tradition by skillfully arranging heritage
  materials for choirs of all ages Moses Hogan
  Chorale

18
Meet the Musician Sojourner Hodges

• 17 Calvary, GA
• Composer
• Pianist
• Writes music left to write like reading a book
• Id like to be a composer of film music and also
  teach composition at a university or
  conservatory

19
Review Questions!

• Vocabulary Word Bank
• Composition
• Fanfare
• Hook
• Modulation
• Synthesizer

• The motive or grabber phrase in a song that
  often accompanies the words of the songs title
• The craft of putting together sounds to create a
  musical work
• An electronic device capable of producing sounds
  in almost any range, tone quality, and volume
• A short, showy tune, usually written for brass,
  played to honor important people or announce an
  important event
• A change of key

20

• What are the characteristics that make Aaron
  Coplands works American?
• What types of music did George Gershwin write?
  What was his most ambitious work?
• Explain the creative process that Diane Warren
  uses in developing her music.
• Name a modern American composer who incorporates
  synthesized sound into her music. What other
  effects are used by this composer?
• Who was the late-twentieth-century composer and
  arranger who was a major force in promoting and
  perservering the African-American
  gospel/spiritual tradition?

21
Essay Questions

• What is the difference between the creative
  process that Libby Larsen uses and the way the
  band Starving Goliath creates its music? If you
  were a composer, which process would you use?
  Why?
• Based on what you know, how would you explain
  Diane Warrens ability to know a song is going to
  be a huge hit?