Daily Log: January 22, 2015

Today I read LaRue's chapter on Rhythm in Guidelines for Style Analysis.  He begins the chapter by stating how complicated rhythm is; obviously he was right, because I hardly understood anything he said from then on.  I did understand one thing that I thought was pretty useful.  It had to do with the terminology we use in describing emphasis we give to certain notes in a rhythmic passage.

LaRue suggests that the following terms be used only in these contexts:
Stress -- describes large-scale rhythmic emphasis (as in meter)
Emphasis -- describes middle-scale emphasis
Accent -- describes small-scale emphasis

I translated Goethe's poems for an hour today.  Some of the lines I translated read exactly as Appelbaum says they should be translated.  That makes me happy.

No sources today.  I know I'll get enough to turn in a bibliography by Monday, but I worry that they won't be the BEST sources.  I have some work to do over the weekend if I want my bibliography to be the best it can be.

Studied Haydn's 88th Symphony today, first, third, and fourth movements.  The second was too formally complicated, so Dr. Johnson skipped it.

I also read a bit about Picinni and the development of more relaxed opera seria styles in Taruskin's Oxford History.

I also finished my Webern piece -- both score and recording -- for good today.  I feel very confident about sharing it tomorrow.

I also took a stab at a phrase/text analysis of a song written by a friend of mine.  We had discussed how to write "good" melodies earlier that day, and I figured why not see how his process worked?

Here's my initial "chicken-scratch" analysis.  The colors in the text correspond with the lines that appear in the phrase arcs.  Beside the arcs are primary vowels that are used within the rhyme schemes of that specific stanza.  I prefer phonic symbols over IPA, probably because it's less to memorize. This would be a good place to present my findings once I've finished analyzing and "cleaned up" my visuals.

Here's a link to the bandcamp site for my friend's band Quiet House.  The song is called "Rolling Waters."  I really like looking deeply at music written by people I know.  Knowing the stories and people behind a song always makes you appreciate it a little more.

I also picked up a very important book pertaining to my thesis:

Oliveros, Pauline. Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice. Lincoln, Nebraska: Deep Listening Publications, 2005.

In GEM today, we explored opposites and then performed a short "opera" based off of a poem by Sun Ra.  It was slightly terrifying to put all of my trust into the man I was vocalizing with (he was the only one with access to the text), but I feel like the outcome was pleasant.

I was also challenged today to write poetry.  Hmmmm....

Tomorrow I pledge to find and cite at least 10 more sources for my bibliography.