Musical compositions
A piece of music exists in the form of a written composition in musical notation or as a single acoustic event (a live performance or recorded track). If composed before being performed, music can be performed from memory, through written musical notation, or through a combination of both. Compositions comprise musical elements, which vary widely from person to person and between cultures. Improvisation is the act of composing immediately before or during the performance, assembling musical elements "spontaneously and eruptedly
Composition as musical form
In discussing the structure or organization of a musical work, the composition of that work is generally called its musical form. These techniques draw a parallel to art's formal elements. Sometimes, the entire form of a piece is through-composed, meaning that each part is different, with no repetition of sections; other forms include strophic, rondo, verse-chorus, or other parts. Some pieces are composed around a set scale, where the compositional technique might be considered the usage of a particular scale. Others are composed during performance (see improvisation), where a variety of techniques are also sometimes used.Some are used from particular songs which are familiar.
Important in tonal musical composition is the scale for the notes used, including the mode and tonic note. When playing or reading classical notated music, only the key signature (a designated set of notes in scale) matters. In music using twelve tone techniques, the tone row is even more comprehensive a factor than a scale. Similarly, music of the Middle East employs compositions that are rigidly based on a specific mode (such as the dorian, phrygian, mixolydian, and locrian scales), often within improvisational contexts, as does Indian classical music in both the Hindustani and the Carnatic systems, gamelans of Java and Bali, and much music in Africa.
Composing music
People who practice composition are called composers. Compositional techniques are the methods used to create music. Useful skills in composition include writing musical notation, instrumentation, and handling musical ensembles (orchestration). Other skills include extended techniques such as improvisation, musical montage, preparing instruments, using non-traditional instruments, and other methods of sound production.
Minggu, 04 Mei 2008
Blues Music
Blues
Blues is a vocal and instrumental form of music based on the use of the blue notes. It emerged in African-American communities of the United States from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The use of blue notes and the prominence of call-and-response patterns in the music and lyrics are indicative of African influence. The blues influenced later American and Western popular music, as it became the roots of jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, bluegrass, hip-hop, and other popular music forms.
Etymology
The phrase "the blues" is a reference to the the blue devils, meaning 'down' spirits, depression and sadness. An early reference to "the blues" can be found in George Colman's farce Blue devils, a farce in one act (1798).[1] Later during the 19th century, the phrase was used as a euphemism for delirium tremens and the police, and was not uncommon in letters from homesick Civil War soldiers.
Though the use of the phrase in African American music may be older, it has been attested to since 1912, when Hart Wand's "Dallas Blues" became the first copyrighted Blues composition.[2][3] In lyrics the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood
Stylistic and cultural origins
There are few characteristics common to all blues, because the genre takes its shape from the idiosyncrasies of individual performances.[5] However, there are some characteristics that were present long before the creation of the modern blues.
An early form of blues-like music were call-and-response shouts, which were a "functional expression... style without accompaniment or harmony and unbounded by the formality of any particular musical structure."[6] A form of this pre-blues was heard in slave field shouts and hollers, expanded into "simple solo songs laden with emotional content".[7] The blues, as it is now known, can be seen as a musical style based on both European harmonic structure and the African call-and-response tradition, transformed into an interplay of voice and guitar.[8]
Many blues elements, such as the call-and-response format and the use of blue notes, can be traced back to the music of Africa. The Diddley bow, a homemade one-stringed instrument found in parts of the American South in the early twentieth century, and the banjo, are African-derived instruments that may have helped in the transfer of African performance techniques into the early blues instrumental vocabulary.
Robert Johnson, a Delta blues singer, contributed to the standardization of the 12-bar blues form.
Blues music later adopted elements from the "Ethiopian airs", minstrel shows and Negro spirituals, including instrumental and harmonic accompaniment.[9] The style also was closely related to ragtime, which developed at about the same time, though the blues better preserved "the original melodic patterns of African music".[10]
Blues songs from this period, such as Lead Belly's or Henry Thomas's recordings, show many different structures. The twelve-, eight-, or sixteen-bar structure based on tonic (I), subdominant (IV) and dominant chords (V) became the most common forms.[11] What is now recognizable as the standard 12-bar blues form is documented from oral history and sheet music appearing in African American communities throughout the region along the lower Mississippi River, in Memphis, Tennessee's Beale Street, and by white bands in New Orleans.
Lyrics
The original lyrical form of the blues was probably a single line, repeated four times. It was only later that the current, most common structure of a line, repeated once and then followed by a single line conclusion, became standard.[12] These lines were often sung following a pattern closer to a rhythmic talk than to a melody.
Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative. The singer voiced often his or her "personal woes in a world of harsh reality: a lost love, the cruelty of police officers, oppression at the hands of white folk, [and] hard times".[13] Many of the oldest blues records contain gritty, realistic lyrics, in contrast to much of the popular music being recorded at the time. For example, "Down in the Alley" by Memphis Minnie, is about a prostitute having sex with men in an alley.
Music such as this was called "gut-bucket" blues, a term which refers to a type of homemade bass instrument made from a metal bucket used to clean pig intestines for chitterlings (a soul food dish associated with slavery). "Gut-bucket" blues songs are typically "low-down" and earthy, about rocky or steamy man-woman relationships, hard luck and hard times. Gut-bucket blues and the rowdy juke-joint venues where it was played, earned blues music an unsavory reputation; church-goers shunned it and some preachers railed against it.
Author Ed Morales has claimed that Yoruba mythology played a part in early blues, citing Robert Johnson's "Cross Road Blues" as a "thinly veiled reference to Eleggua, the orisha in charge of the crossroads".[14] However, many seminal blues artists such as Son House, or Skip James had in their repertoire several religious songs or spirituals. Reverend Gary Davis and Blind Willie Johnson are examples of artists often categorized as blues musicians for their music but whose lyrics clearly belong to the spirituals.
Although the blues gained an association with misery and oppression, the blues could also be humorous and raunchy as well:
"Rebecca, Rebecca, get your big legs off of me,
Rebecca, Rebecca, get your big legs off of me,
It may be sending you baby, but it's worrying the hell out of me."[citation needed]
In particular, Hokum blues celebrated both comedic lyrical content and a boisterous, farcical performance style. Tampa Red's classic "Tight Like That" is a sly wordplay with the double meaning of being "tight" with someone coupled with a more salacious physical familiarity.
Lyrical content of music became slightly simpler in post war blues in which focus was often almost exclusively on singer's sexual worries. Many lyrical themes that frequently appeared in pre war blues such as economic depression, transportation, technology, horses, cows, devils, gambling, magic, floods and dry periods were mostly left out in post war blues.
History of the blues genres
Blues has evolved from an unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of African-American slaves and rural blacks into a wide variety of styles and subgenres, with regional variations across the United States and, later, Europe and Africa. The musical forms and styles that are now considered the "blues" as well as modern "country music" arose in the same regions during the nineteenth century in the southern United States. Recorded blues and country can be found from as far back as the 1920s, when the popular record industry developed and created marketing categories called "race music" and "hillbilly music" to sell music by blacks for blacks and by whites for whites, respectively.
At the time, there was no clear musical division between "blues" and "country," except for the ethnicity of the performer, and even that sometimes was documented incorrectly by record companies.[22] Studies have situated the origin of black spirituals inside slaves' exposure to their white Hebridean-originated gospels. African-American economist and historian Thomas Sowell also notes that the southern, black, ex-slave population was acculturated to a considerable degree by and among their Scots-Irish "redneck" neighbours. However, the findings of Kubik and others also clearly attest to the essential Africanness of many essential aspects of blues expression.
The social and economic reasons for the appearance of the blues are not fully known.[23] The first appearance of the blues is not well defined and is often dated between 1870 and 1900, a period that coincides with Emancipation and the transition from slavery to sharecropping, small-scale agricultural production and the expansion of railroads in the southern United States.
Several scholars characterize the early 1900s development of blues music as a move from group performances to a more individualized style. They argue that the development of the blues is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the enslaved people. According to Lawrence Levine,[24] "there was a direct relationship between the national ideological emphasis upon the individual, the popularity of Booker T. Washington's teachings, and the rise of the blues." Levine states that "psychologically, socially, and economically, Negroes were being acculturated in a way that would have been impossible during slavery, and it is hardly surprising that their secular music reflected this as much as their religious music did."
Prewar blues
The American sheet music publishing industry produced a great deal of ragtime music. By 1912, the sheet music industry published three popular blues-like compositions, precipitating the Tin Pan Alley adoption of blues elements: "Baby Seals' Blues" by "Baby" F. Seals (arranged by Artie Matthews), "Dallas Blues" by Hart Wand and "Memphis Blues" by W. C. Handy.[25]
Handy was a formally trained musician, composer and arranger who helped to popularize the blues by transcribing and orchestrating blues in an almost symphonic style, with bands and singers. He became a popular and prolific composer, and billed himself as the "Father of the Blues"; however, his compositions can be described as a fusion of blues with ragtime and jazz, a merger facilitated using the Cuban habanera rhythm that had long been a part of ragtime;[26][27] Handy's signature work was the "St. Louis Blues".
In the 1920s, the blues became a major element of African American and American popular music, reaching white audiences via Handy's arrangements and the classic female blues performers. The blues evolved from informal performances in bars to entertainment in theaters. Blues performances were organized by the Theater Owners Bookers Association in nightclubs such as the Cotton Club, and juke joints, such as the bars along Beale Street in Memphis. This evolution led to a notable diversification of the styles and to a clearer division between blues and jazz. Several record companies, such as the American Record Corporation, Okeh Records, and Paramount Records, began to record African American music.
As the recording industry grew, country blues performers like Bo Carter, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lonnie Johnson, Tampa Red and Blind Blake became more popular in the African American community. Sylvester Weaver was the first to record the slide guitar style, in which a guitar is fretted with a knife blade or the sawed-off neck of a bottle. The slide guitar became an important part of the Delta blues.[28] The first blues recordings from the 1920s were in two categories: a traditional, rural country blues and more polished 'city' or urban blues.
Country blues performers often improvised, either without accompaniment or with only a banjo or guitar. There were many regional styles of country blues in the early 20th century. The (Mississippi) Delta blues was a rootsy sparse style with passionate vocals accompanied by slide guitar. Robert Johnson,[29] who was little-recorded, combined elements of both urban and rural blues. Along with Robert Johnson, influential performers of this style were his predecessors Charley Patton and Son House. Singers such as Blind Willie McTell and Blind Boy Fuller performed in the southeastern "delicate and lyrical" Piedmont blues tradition, which used an elaborate fingerpicking guitar technique. Georgia also had an early slide tradition.[30]
The lively Memphis blues style, which developed in the 1920s and 1930s around Memphis, Tennessee, was influenced by jug bands, such as the Memphis Jug Band or the Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers. Performers such as Frank Stokes, Blind Old Tom Anderson, Sleepy John Estes, Robert Wilkins, Big Boy Brazier, Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie used a variety of unusual instruments such as washboard, fiddle, kazoo or mandolin. Memphis Minnie was famous for her virtuoso guitar style. Pianist Memphis Slim began his career in Memphis, but his quite distinct style was smoother and contained some swing elements. Many blues musicians based in Memphis moved to Chicago in the late 1930s or early 1940s and became part of the urban blues movement which blended country music and electric blues.
Bessie Smith was a very famous early blues singer.
City or urban blues styles were more codified and elaborate.[31] Classic female urban or vaudeville blues singers were popular in the 1920s, among them Mamie Smith, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Victoria Spivey. Mamie Smith, more a vaudeville performer than a blues artist, was the first African- American to record a blues in 1920; her "Crazy Blues" sold 75,000 copies in its first month.[32]
Ma Rainey, called the "Mother of Blues", and Bessie Smith sang "... each song around centre tones, perhaps in order to project her voice more easily to the back of a room." Smith would "...sing a song in an unusual key, and her artistry in bending and stretching notes with her beautiful, powerful contralto to accommodate her own interpretation was unsurpassed".[33] Urban male performers included popular black musicians of the era, such Tampa Red, Big Bill Broonzy and Leroy Carr. Before WWII, Tampa Red was sometimes referred to as "The Guitar Wizard." Carr made the then-unusual choice of accompanying himself on the piano.[34]
A typical boogie-woogie bassline
Boogie-woogie was another important style of 1930s and early 1940s urban blues. While the style is often associated with solo piano, boogie-woogie was also used to accompany singers and, as a solo part, in bands and small combos. Boogie-Woogie style was characterized by a regular bass figure, an ostinato or riff and shifts of level in the left hand, elaborating each chord and trills and decorations in the right hand. Boogie-woogie was pioneered by the Chicago-based Jimmy Yancey and the Boogie-Woogie Trio (Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis). Chicago boogie-woogie performers included Clarence "Pine Top" Smith and Earl Hines, who "linked the propulsive left-hand rhythms of the ragtime pianists with melodic figures similar to those of Armstrong's trumpet in the right hand".[35]
In the 1940s, the jump blues style developed. Jump blues is influenced by big band music and uses saxophone or other brass instruments and the guitar in the rhythm section to create a jazzy, up-tempo sound with declamatory vocals. Jump blues tunes by Louis Jordan and Big Joe Turner, based in Kansas City, Missouri, influenced the development of later styles such as rock and roll and rhythm and blues.[36] The smooth Louisiana style of Professor Longhair and, more recently, Dr. John blends classic rhythm and blues with blues styles.
Early postwar blues
After World War II and in the 1950s, new styles of electric blues music became popular in cities such as Chicago, Detroit and St. Louis. Electric blues used amplified electric guitars, electric bass, drums, and harmonica. Chicago became a center for electric blues in the early 1950s. Chicago blues is influenced to a large extent by the Mississippi blues style, because many performers had migrated from the Mississippi region. Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, and Jimmy Reed were all born in Mississippi and moved to Chicago during the Great Migration. Their style is characterized by the use of electric guitar, sometimes slide guitar, harmonica, and a rhythm section of bass and drums. J. T. Brown who played in Elmore James's or J. B. Lenoir's bands, also used saxophones, but these were used more as "backing" or rhythmic support than as solo instruments.
Muddy Waters, described as "the guiding light of the modern blues school"[37]
Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) are well known harmonica (called "harp" by blues musicians) players of the early Chicago blues scene. Other harp players such as Big Walter Horton were also influential. Muddy Waters and Elmore James were known for their innovative use of slide electric guitar. B. B. King and Freddie King (no relation), who did not use slide guitar, were influential guitarists of the Electric blues style, even though they weren't from Chicago. Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters were known for their deep, "gravelly" voices.
Bassist and composer Willie Dixon played a major role on the Chicago blues scene. He composed and wrote many standard blues songs of the period, such as "Hoochie Coochie Man", "I Just Want to Make Love to You" (both penned for Muddy Waters) and, "Wang Dang Doodle" and "Back Door Man" for Howlin' Wolf. Most artists of the Chicago blues style recorded for the Chicago-based Chess Records label. Other prominent blues labels of this era included J.O.B. Records and Vee-Jay Records.
In the 1950s, blues had a huge influence on mainstream American popular music and in particular on the development of rockabilly. While popular musicians like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry were influenced by the Chicago blues, their enthusiastic playing styles departed from the melancholy aspects of blues. Diddley and Berry's approach to performance was one of the factors that influenced the transition from the blues to rock 'n' roll. Elvis Presley and Bill Haley were more influenced by the jump blues and boogie-woogie styles. They popularized rock and roll within the white segment of the population. Chicago blues also influenced Louisiana's zydeco music, with Clifton Chenier using blues accents. Zydeco musicians used electric solo guitar and cajun arrangements of blues standards.
Other blues artists, such as T-Bone Walker, Michael Walton and John Lee Hooker, had influences not directly related to the Chicago style. Dallas-born T-Bone Walker is often associated with the California blues style, which is smoother than Chicago blues and is a transition between the Chicago blues, the jump blues and swing with some jazz-guitar influence. John Lee Hooker's blues is more "personal", based on Hooker's deep rough voice accompanied by a single electric guitar. Though not directly influenced by boogie woogie, his "groovy" style is sometimes called "guitar boogie". His first hit "Boogie Chillen" reached #1 on the R&B charts in 1949.[38]
By the late 1950s, the swamp blues genre developed near Baton Rouge, with performers such as Slim Harpo, Sam Myers and Jerry McCain. Swamp blues has a slower pace and a simpler use of the harmonica than the Chicago blues style performers such as Little Walter or Muddy Waters. Songs from this genre include "Scratch my Back", "She's Tough" and "I'm a King Bee".
Blues in the 1960s and 1970s
By the beginning of the 1960s, genres influenced by African American music such as rock and roll and soul were part of mainstream popular music. White performers had brought African-American music to new audiences, both within the US and abroad. In the UK, bands emulated US blues legends, and UK blues-rock-based bands had an influential role throughout the 1960s.
Blues legend B.B. King with his guitar, "Lucille"
Blues performers such as John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters continued to perform to enthusiastic audiences, inspiring new artists steeped in traditional blues, such as New York-born Taj Mahal. John Lee Hooker blended his blues style with rock elements and playing with younger white musicians, creating a musical style that can be heard on the 1971 album Endless Boogie. B. B. King's virtuoso guitar technique earned him the eponymous title "king of the blues". In contrast to the Chicago style, King's band used strong brass support from a saxophone, trumpet, and trombone, instead of using slide guitar or harp. Tennessee-born Bobby "Blue" Bland, like B. B. King, also straddled the blues and R&B genres. During this period, Freddie King and Albert King often played with rock and soul musicians (Eric Clapton, Booker T & the MGs)and had a major influence on those styles of music that has carried through to the present.
The music of the Civil Rights and Free Speech movements in the US prompted a resurgence of interest in American roots music and early African American music. As well as Jimmi Bass Music festivals such as the Newport Folk Festival brought traditional blues to a new audience, which helped to revive interest in prewar acoustic blues and performers such as Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, and Reverend Gary Davis. Many compilations of classic prewar blues were republished by the Yazoo Records. J. B. Lenoir from the Chicago blues movement in the 1950s recorded several LPs using acoustic guitar, sometimes accompanied by Willie Dixon on the acoustic bass or drums. His songs commented on political issues such as racism or Vietnam War issues, which was unusual for this period. His Alabama Blues recording had a song that stated:
I never will go back to Alabama, that is not the place for me (2x)
You know they killed my sister and my brother,
and the whole world let them peoples go down there free
White audiences' interest in the blues during the 1960s increased due to the Chicago-based Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the British blues movement. The style of British blues developed in the UK, when bands such as Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, and Cream performed classic blues songs from the Delta or Chicago blues traditions.
The British blues musicians of the early 1960s inspired a number of American blues-rock fusion performers, including Canned Heat, Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter, The J. Geils Band, Ry Cooder and The Allman Brothers Band. Many of Led Zeppelin's earlier hits were renditions of traditional blues songs. One blues-rock performer, Jimi Hendrix, was a rarity in his field at the time: a black man who played psychedelic rock. Hendrix was a skilled guitarist, and a pioneer in the innovative use of distortion and feedback in his music.[39] Through these artists and others, blues music influenced the development of rock music.
In the late 1960s, the West Side style blues emerged in Chicago with Magic Sam, Magic Slim and Otis Rush. West Side style has strong rhythmic support from a rhythm guitar, bass electric guitar, and drums. Albert King, Buddy Guy, and Luther Allison had a West Side style that was dominated by amplified electric lead guitar.
Since the early 1970s, The Texas rock-blues style emerged which used guitars in both solo and rhythm roles. In contrast with the West Side blues, the Texas style is strongly influenced by the British rock-blues movement. Major artists of the Texas style are Johnny Winter, Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and ZZ Top. These artists all began their musical journey in the 1970s, but they wouldn't achieve major international success until the next decade.
Blues from the 1980s to the present
Since the 1980s, there has been a resurgence of interest in the blues among a certain part of the African-American population, particularly around Jackson, MS and other deep South regions. Often termed "soul blues" or "Southern Soul," the music at the heart of this movement was given new life by the unexpected success of two particular recordings on the Jackson-based Malaco label: Z. Z. Hill's Down Home Blues (1982) and Little Milton's The Blues is Alright (1984). Contemporary African-American performers who work this vein of the blues include Bobby Rush, Denise LaSalle, Sir Charles Jones, Bettye LaVette, Marvin Sease and Peggy Scott-Adams.
Texas blues guitarist, Stevie Ray Vaughan
During the 1980s, blues also continued in both traditional and new forms. In 1982, the album Strong Persuader revealed Robert Cray as a major blues artist. The first Stevie Ray Vaughan recording Texas Flood was released in 1983, and the Texas based guitarist exploded onto the international stage. 1989 saw a revival of John Lee Hooker's popularity with the album The Healer. Eric Clapton known for his performances with the Blues Breakers and Cream, made a comeback in the 1990s with his album Unplugged, in which he played some standard blues numbers on acoustic guitar.
In the 1980s and 1990s, blues publications such as Living Blues and Blues Revue began to be distributed, major cities began forming blues societies, outdoor blues festivals became more common, and[40] more nightclubs and venues for blues emerged.[41]
In the 1990s, blues performers explored a range of musical genres, as can be seen, for example, from the broad array of nominees of the yearly Blues Music Awards, previously named W. C. Handy Awards[42] or of the Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary and Traditional Blues Album. Contemporary blues music is nurtured by several blues labels such as: Alligator Records, Ruf Records, Chess Records (MCA), Delmark Records, NorthernBlues Music, and Vanguard Records (Artemis Records). Some labels are famous for their rediscovering and remastering of blues rarities such as Arhoolie Records, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (heir of Folkways Records) and Yazoo Records (Shanachie Records).[43]
Young blues artists today are exploring all aspects of the blues, from classic delta to more rock-oriented blues, artists born after 1970 like Sean Costello,Anthony Gomes, Shemekia Copeland, Jonny Lang, Corey Harris, Susan Tedeschi,Joe Bonamassa,The White Stripes, North Mississippi Allstars, The Black Keys, Bob Log III, Jose P and Hillstomp developing their own styles.[44]
In another cotton-producing community, Memphis, Texas, not Memphis, Tennessee, William Daniel McFalls, or Blues Boy Willie, is attempting to revive the past popularity of blues to contemporary society.
Blues is a vocal and instrumental form of music based on the use of the blue notes. It emerged in African-American communities of the United States from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The use of blue notes and the prominence of call-and-response patterns in the music and lyrics are indicative of African influence. The blues influenced later American and Western popular music, as it became the roots of jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, bluegrass, hip-hop, and other popular music forms.
Etymology
The phrase "the blues" is a reference to the the blue devils, meaning 'down' spirits, depression and sadness. An early reference to "the blues" can be found in George Colman's farce Blue devils, a farce in one act (1798).[1] Later during the 19th century, the phrase was used as a euphemism for delirium tremens and the police, and was not uncommon in letters from homesick Civil War soldiers.
Though the use of the phrase in African American music may be older, it has been attested to since 1912, when Hart Wand's "Dallas Blues" became the first copyrighted Blues composition.[2][3] In lyrics the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood
Stylistic and cultural origins
There are few characteristics common to all blues, because the genre takes its shape from the idiosyncrasies of individual performances.[5] However, there are some characteristics that were present long before the creation of the modern blues.
An early form of blues-like music were call-and-response shouts, which were a "functional expression... style without accompaniment or harmony and unbounded by the formality of any particular musical structure."[6] A form of this pre-blues was heard in slave field shouts and hollers, expanded into "simple solo songs laden with emotional content".[7] The blues, as it is now known, can be seen as a musical style based on both European harmonic structure and the African call-and-response tradition, transformed into an interplay of voice and guitar.[8]
Many blues elements, such as the call-and-response format and the use of blue notes, can be traced back to the music of Africa. The Diddley bow, a homemade one-stringed instrument found in parts of the American South in the early twentieth century, and the banjo, are African-derived instruments that may have helped in the transfer of African performance techniques into the early blues instrumental vocabulary.
Robert Johnson, a Delta blues singer, contributed to the standardization of the 12-bar blues form.
Blues music later adopted elements from the "Ethiopian airs", minstrel shows and Negro spirituals, including instrumental and harmonic accompaniment.[9] The style also was closely related to ragtime, which developed at about the same time, though the blues better preserved "the original melodic patterns of African music".[10]
Blues songs from this period, such as Lead Belly's or Henry Thomas's recordings, show many different structures. The twelve-, eight-, or sixteen-bar structure based on tonic (I), subdominant (IV) and dominant chords (V) became the most common forms.[11] What is now recognizable as the standard 12-bar blues form is documented from oral history and sheet music appearing in African American communities throughout the region along the lower Mississippi River, in Memphis, Tennessee's Beale Street, and by white bands in New Orleans.
Lyrics
The original lyrical form of the blues was probably a single line, repeated four times. It was only later that the current, most common structure of a line, repeated once and then followed by a single line conclusion, became standard.[12] These lines were often sung following a pattern closer to a rhythmic talk than to a melody.
Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative. The singer voiced often his or her "personal woes in a world of harsh reality: a lost love, the cruelty of police officers, oppression at the hands of white folk, [and] hard times".[13] Many of the oldest blues records contain gritty, realistic lyrics, in contrast to much of the popular music being recorded at the time. For example, "Down in the Alley" by Memphis Minnie, is about a prostitute having sex with men in an alley.
Music such as this was called "gut-bucket" blues, a term which refers to a type of homemade bass instrument made from a metal bucket used to clean pig intestines for chitterlings (a soul food dish associated with slavery). "Gut-bucket" blues songs are typically "low-down" and earthy, about rocky or steamy man-woman relationships, hard luck and hard times. Gut-bucket blues and the rowdy juke-joint venues where it was played, earned blues music an unsavory reputation; church-goers shunned it and some preachers railed against it.
Author Ed Morales has claimed that Yoruba mythology played a part in early blues, citing Robert Johnson's "Cross Road Blues" as a "thinly veiled reference to Eleggua, the orisha in charge of the crossroads".[14] However, many seminal blues artists such as Son House, or Skip James had in their repertoire several religious songs or spirituals. Reverend Gary Davis and Blind Willie Johnson are examples of artists often categorized as blues musicians for their music but whose lyrics clearly belong to the spirituals.
Although the blues gained an association with misery and oppression, the blues could also be humorous and raunchy as well:
"Rebecca, Rebecca, get your big legs off of me,
Rebecca, Rebecca, get your big legs off of me,
It may be sending you baby, but it's worrying the hell out of me."[citation needed]
In particular, Hokum blues celebrated both comedic lyrical content and a boisterous, farcical performance style. Tampa Red's classic "Tight Like That" is a sly wordplay with the double meaning of being "tight" with someone coupled with a more salacious physical familiarity.
Lyrical content of music became slightly simpler in post war blues in which focus was often almost exclusively on singer's sexual worries. Many lyrical themes that frequently appeared in pre war blues such as economic depression, transportation, technology, horses, cows, devils, gambling, magic, floods and dry periods were mostly left out in post war blues.
History of the blues genres
Blues has evolved from an unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of African-American slaves and rural blacks into a wide variety of styles and subgenres, with regional variations across the United States and, later, Europe and Africa. The musical forms and styles that are now considered the "blues" as well as modern "country music" arose in the same regions during the nineteenth century in the southern United States. Recorded blues and country can be found from as far back as the 1920s, when the popular record industry developed and created marketing categories called "race music" and "hillbilly music" to sell music by blacks for blacks and by whites for whites, respectively.
At the time, there was no clear musical division between "blues" and "country," except for the ethnicity of the performer, and even that sometimes was documented incorrectly by record companies.[22] Studies have situated the origin of black spirituals inside slaves' exposure to their white Hebridean-originated gospels. African-American economist and historian Thomas Sowell also notes that the southern, black, ex-slave population was acculturated to a considerable degree by and among their Scots-Irish "redneck" neighbours. However, the findings of Kubik and others also clearly attest to the essential Africanness of many essential aspects of blues expression.
The social and economic reasons for the appearance of the blues are not fully known.[23] The first appearance of the blues is not well defined and is often dated between 1870 and 1900, a period that coincides with Emancipation and the transition from slavery to sharecropping, small-scale agricultural production and the expansion of railroads in the southern United States.
Several scholars characterize the early 1900s development of blues music as a move from group performances to a more individualized style. They argue that the development of the blues is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the enslaved people. According to Lawrence Levine,[24] "there was a direct relationship between the national ideological emphasis upon the individual, the popularity of Booker T. Washington's teachings, and the rise of the blues." Levine states that "psychologically, socially, and economically, Negroes were being acculturated in a way that would have been impossible during slavery, and it is hardly surprising that their secular music reflected this as much as their religious music did."
Prewar blues
The American sheet music publishing industry produced a great deal of ragtime music. By 1912, the sheet music industry published three popular blues-like compositions, precipitating the Tin Pan Alley adoption of blues elements: "Baby Seals' Blues" by "Baby" F. Seals (arranged by Artie Matthews), "Dallas Blues" by Hart Wand and "Memphis Blues" by W. C. Handy.[25]
Handy was a formally trained musician, composer and arranger who helped to popularize the blues by transcribing and orchestrating blues in an almost symphonic style, with bands and singers. He became a popular and prolific composer, and billed himself as the "Father of the Blues"; however, his compositions can be described as a fusion of blues with ragtime and jazz, a merger facilitated using the Cuban habanera rhythm that had long been a part of ragtime;[26][27] Handy's signature work was the "St. Louis Blues".
In the 1920s, the blues became a major element of African American and American popular music, reaching white audiences via Handy's arrangements and the classic female blues performers. The blues evolved from informal performances in bars to entertainment in theaters. Blues performances were organized by the Theater Owners Bookers Association in nightclubs such as the Cotton Club, and juke joints, such as the bars along Beale Street in Memphis. This evolution led to a notable diversification of the styles and to a clearer division between blues and jazz. Several record companies, such as the American Record Corporation, Okeh Records, and Paramount Records, began to record African American music.
As the recording industry grew, country blues performers like Bo Carter, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lonnie Johnson, Tampa Red and Blind Blake became more popular in the African American community. Sylvester Weaver was the first to record the slide guitar style, in which a guitar is fretted with a knife blade or the sawed-off neck of a bottle. The slide guitar became an important part of the Delta blues.[28] The first blues recordings from the 1920s were in two categories: a traditional, rural country blues and more polished 'city' or urban blues.
Country blues performers often improvised, either without accompaniment or with only a banjo or guitar. There were many regional styles of country blues in the early 20th century. The (Mississippi) Delta blues was a rootsy sparse style with passionate vocals accompanied by slide guitar. Robert Johnson,[29] who was little-recorded, combined elements of both urban and rural blues. Along with Robert Johnson, influential performers of this style were his predecessors Charley Patton and Son House. Singers such as Blind Willie McTell and Blind Boy Fuller performed in the southeastern "delicate and lyrical" Piedmont blues tradition, which used an elaborate fingerpicking guitar technique. Georgia also had an early slide tradition.[30]
The lively Memphis blues style, which developed in the 1920s and 1930s around Memphis, Tennessee, was influenced by jug bands, such as the Memphis Jug Band or the Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers. Performers such as Frank Stokes, Blind Old Tom Anderson, Sleepy John Estes, Robert Wilkins, Big Boy Brazier, Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie used a variety of unusual instruments such as washboard, fiddle, kazoo or mandolin. Memphis Minnie was famous for her virtuoso guitar style. Pianist Memphis Slim began his career in Memphis, but his quite distinct style was smoother and contained some swing elements. Many blues musicians based in Memphis moved to Chicago in the late 1930s or early 1940s and became part of the urban blues movement which blended country music and electric blues.
Bessie Smith was a very famous early blues singer.
City or urban blues styles were more codified and elaborate.[31] Classic female urban or vaudeville blues singers were popular in the 1920s, among them Mamie Smith, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Victoria Spivey. Mamie Smith, more a vaudeville performer than a blues artist, was the first African- American to record a blues in 1920; her "Crazy Blues" sold 75,000 copies in its first month.[32]
Ma Rainey, called the "Mother of Blues", and Bessie Smith sang "... each song around centre tones, perhaps in order to project her voice more easily to the back of a room." Smith would "...sing a song in an unusual key, and her artistry in bending and stretching notes with her beautiful, powerful contralto to accommodate her own interpretation was unsurpassed".[33] Urban male performers included popular black musicians of the era, such Tampa Red, Big Bill Broonzy and Leroy Carr. Before WWII, Tampa Red was sometimes referred to as "The Guitar Wizard." Carr made the then-unusual choice of accompanying himself on the piano.[34]
A typical boogie-woogie bassline
Boogie-woogie was another important style of 1930s and early 1940s urban blues. While the style is often associated with solo piano, boogie-woogie was also used to accompany singers and, as a solo part, in bands and small combos. Boogie-Woogie style was characterized by a regular bass figure, an ostinato or riff and shifts of level in the left hand, elaborating each chord and trills and decorations in the right hand. Boogie-woogie was pioneered by the Chicago-based Jimmy Yancey and the Boogie-Woogie Trio (Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis). Chicago boogie-woogie performers included Clarence "Pine Top" Smith and Earl Hines, who "linked the propulsive left-hand rhythms of the ragtime pianists with melodic figures similar to those of Armstrong's trumpet in the right hand".[35]
In the 1940s, the jump blues style developed. Jump blues is influenced by big band music and uses saxophone or other brass instruments and the guitar in the rhythm section to create a jazzy, up-tempo sound with declamatory vocals. Jump blues tunes by Louis Jordan and Big Joe Turner, based in Kansas City, Missouri, influenced the development of later styles such as rock and roll and rhythm and blues.[36] The smooth Louisiana style of Professor Longhair and, more recently, Dr. John blends classic rhythm and blues with blues styles.
Early postwar blues
After World War II and in the 1950s, new styles of electric blues music became popular in cities such as Chicago, Detroit and St. Louis. Electric blues used amplified electric guitars, electric bass, drums, and harmonica. Chicago became a center for electric blues in the early 1950s. Chicago blues is influenced to a large extent by the Mississippi blues style, because many performers had migrated from the Mississippi region. Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, and Jimmy Reed were all born in Mississippi and moved to Chicago during the Great Migration. Their style is characterized by the use of electric guitar, sometimes slide guitar, harmonica, and a rhythm section of bass and drums. J. T. Brown who played in Elmore James's or J. B. Lenoir's bands, also used saxophones, but these were used more as "backing" or rhythmic support than as solo instruments.
Muddy Waters, described as "the guiding light of the modern blues school"[37]
Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) are well known harmonica (called "harp" by blues musicians) players of the early Chicago blues scene. Other harp players such as Big Walter Horton were also influential. Muddy Waters and Elmore James were known for their innovative use of slide electric guitar. B. B. King and Freddie King (no relation), who did not use slide guitar, were influential guitarists of the Electric blues style, even though they weren't from Chicago. Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters were known for their deep, "gravelly" voices.
Bassist and composer Willie Dixon played a major role on the Chicago blues scene. He composed and wrote many standard blues songs of the period, such as "Hoochie Coochie Man", "I Just Want to Make Love to You" (both penned for Muddy Waters) and, "Wang Dang Doodle" and "Back Door Man" for Howlin' Wolf. Most artists of the Chicago blues style recorded for the Chicago-based Chess Records label. Other prominent blues labels of this era included J.O.B. Records and Vee-Jay Records.
In the 1950s, blues had a huge influence on mainstream American popular music and in particular on the development of rockabilly. While popular musicians like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry were influenced by the Chicago blues, their enthusiastic playing styles departed from the melancholy aspects of blues. Diddley and Berry's approach to performance was one of the factors that influenced the transition from the blues to rock 'n' roll. Elvis Presley and Bill Haley were more influenced by the jump blues and boogie-woogie styles. They popularized rock and roll within the white segment of the population. Chicago blues also influenced Louisiana's zydeco music, with Clifton Chenier using blues accents. Zydeco musicians used electric solo guitar and cajun arrangements of blues standards.
Other blues artists, such as T-Bone Walker, Michael Walton and John Lee Hooker, had influences not directly related to the Chicago style. Dallas-born T-Bone Walker is often associated with the California blues style, which is smoother than Chicago blues and is a transition between the Chicago blues, the jump blues and swing with some jazz-guitar influence. John Lee Hooker's blues is more "personal", based on Hooker's deep rough voice accompanied by a single electric guitar. Though not directly influenced by boogie woogie, his "groovy" style is sometimes called "guitar boogie". His first hit "Boogie Chillen" reached #1 on the R&B charts in 1949.[38]
By the late 1950s, the swamp blues genre developed near Baton Rouge, with performers such as Slim Harpo, Sam Myers and Jerry McCain. Swamp blues has a slower pace and a simpler use of the harmonica than the Chicago blues style performers such as Little Walter or Muddy Waters. Songs from this genre include "Scratch my Back", "She's Tough" and "I'm a King Bee".
Blues in the 1960s and 1970s
By the beginning of the 1960s, genres influenced by African American music such as rock and roll and soul were part of mainstream popular music. White performers had brought African-American music to new audiences, both within the US and abroad. In the UK, bands emulated US blues legends, and UK blues-rock-based bands had an influential role throughout the 1960s.
Blues legend B.B. King with his guitar, "Lucille"
Blues performers such as John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters continued to perform to enthusiastic audiences, inspiring new artists steeped in traditional blues, such as New York-born Taj Mahal. John Lee Hooker blended his blues style with rock elements and playing with younger white musicians, creating a musical style that can be heard on the 1971 album Endless Boogie. B. B. King's virtuoso guitar technique earned him the eponymous title "king of the blues". In contrast to the Chicago style, King's band used strong brass support from a saxophone, trumpet, and trombone, instead of using slide guitar or harp. Tennessee-born Bobby "Blue" Bland, like B. B. King, also straddled the blues and R&B genres. During this period, Freddie King and Albert King often played with rock and soul musicians (Eric Clapton, Booker T & the MGs)and had a major influence on those styles of music that has carried through to the present.
The music of the Civil Rights and Free Speech movements in the US prompted a resurgence of interest in American roots music and early African American music. As well as Jimmi Bass Music festivals such as the Newport Folk Festival brought traditional blues to a new audience, which helped to revive interest in prewar acoustic blues and performers such as Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, and Reverend Gary Davis. Many compilations of classic prewar blues were republished by the Yazoo Records. J. B. Lenoir from the Chicago blues movement in the 1950s recorded several LPs using acoustic guitar, sometimes accompanied by Willie Dixon on the acoustic bass or drums. His songs commented on political issues such as racism or Vietnam War issues, which was unusual for this period. His Alabama Blues recording had a song that stated:
I never will go back to Alabama, that is not the place for me (2x)
You know they killed my sister and my brother,
and the whole world let them peoples go down there free
White audiences' interest in the blues during the 1960s increased due to the Chicago-based Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the British blues movement. The style of British blues developed in the UK, when bands such as Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, and Cream performed classic blues songs from the Delta or Chicago blues traditions.
The British blues musicians of the early 1960s inspired a number of American blues-rock fusion performers, including Canned Heat, Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter, The J. Geils Band, Ry Cooder and The Allman Brothers Band. Many of Led Zeppelin's earlier hits were renditions of traditional blues songs. One blues-rock performer, Jimi Hendrix, was a rarity in his field at the time: a black man who played psychedelic rock. Hendrix was a skilled guitarist, and a pioneer in the innovative use of distortion and feedback in his music.[39] Through these artists and others, blues music influenced the development of rock music.
In the late 1960s, the West Side style blues emerged in Chicago with Magic Sam, Magic Slim and Otis Rush. West Side style has strong rhythmic support from a rhythm guitar, bass electric guitar, and drums. Albert King, Buddy Guy, and Luther Allison had a West Side style that was dominated by amplified electric lead guitar.
Since the early 1970s, The Texas rock-blues style emerged which used guitars in both solo and rhythm roles. In contrast with the West Side blues, the Texas style is strongly influenced by the British rock-blues movement. Major artists of the Texas style are Johnny Winter, Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and ZZ Top. These artists all began their musical journey in the 1970s, but they wouldn't achieve major international success until the next decade.
Blues from the 1980s to the present
Since the 1980s, there has been a resurgence of interest in the blues among a certain part of the African-American population, particularly around Jackson, MS and other deep South regions. Often termed "soul blues" or "Southern Soul," the music at the heart of this movement was given new life by the unexpected success of two particular recordings on the Jackson-based Malaco label: Z. Z. Hill's Down Home Blues (1982) and Little Milton's The Blues is Alright (1984). Contemporary African-American performers who work this vein of the blues include Bobby Rush, Denise LaSalle, Sir Charles Jones, Bettye LaVette, Marvin Sease and Peggy Scott-Adams.
Texas blues guitarist, Stevie Ray Vaughan
During the 1980s, blues also continued in both traditional and new forms. In 1982, the album Strong Persuader revealed Robert Cray as a major blues artist. The first Stevie Ray Vaughan recording Texas Flood was released in 1983, and the Texas based guitarist exploded onto the international stage. 1989 saw a revival of John Lee Hooker's popularity with the album The Healer. Eric Clapton known for his performances with the Blues Breakers and Cream, made a comeback in the 1990s with his album Unplugged, in which he played some standard blues numbers on acoustic guitar.
In the 1980s and 1990s, blues publications such as Living Blues and Blues Revue began to be distributed, major cities began forming blues societies, outdoor blues festivals became more common, and[40] more nightclubs and venues for blues emerged.[41]
In the 1990s, blues performers explored a range of musical genres, as can be seen, for example, from the broad array of nominees of the yearly Blues Music Awards, previously named W. C. Handy Awards[42] or of the Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary and Traditional Blues Album. Contemporary blues music is nurtured by several blues labels such as: Alligator Records, Ruf Records, Chess Records (MCA), Delmark Records, NorthernBlues Music, and Vanguard Records (Artemis Records). Some labels are famous for their rediscovering and remastering of blues rarities such as Arhoolie Records, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (heir of Folkways Records) and Yazoo Records (Shanachie Records).[43]
Young blues artists today are exploring all aspects of the blues, from classic delta to more rock-oriented blues, artists born after 1970 like Sean Costello,Anthony Gomes, Shemekia Copeland, Jonny Lang, Corey Harris, Susan Tedeschi,Joe Bonamassa,The White Stripes, North Mississippi Allstars, The Black Keys, Bob Log III, Jose P and Hillstomp developing their own styles.[44]
In another cotton-producing community, Memphis, Texas, not Memphis, Tennessee, William Daniel McFalls, or Blues Boy Willie, is attempting to revive the past popularity of blues to contemporary society.
Ornament Music
Trill
Main article: trill (music)
A trill is a rapid alternation between an indicated note and the one above, also known as the shake. Usually, if the music containing the trill was written before 1800 the trill is played by starting a note above the written note. If the music was written after 1800 then the trill is usually played by starting on the note written and going up to the note above. A printed score will often indicate which interpretation is to be used, either in the preface to the score or by using a grace note.
Sometimes it is expected that the trill will end with a turn (by sounding the note below rather than the note above the principal note, immediately before the last sounding of the principal note), or some other variation. Such variations are often marked with a few grace notes following the note that bears the trill indication.
The trill is indicated by either a or a ~~, with the ~ representing the length of the trill, above the staff. In Baroque music sometime the trill is indicated with a + (plus) sign above or below the note.
Mordent
The mordent is thought of as a rapid single alternation between an indicated note, the note above (called the upper mordent, inverted mordent, or pralltriller) or below (called the lower mordent or mordent), and the indicated note again.
The upper mordent is indicated by a short squiggle (which may also indicate a trill); the lower mordent is the same with a short vertical line through it:
This can also be called a turn
As with the trill, the exact speed with which the mordent is performed will vary according to the tempo of the piece, but at moderate tempi the above might be executed as follows:
Mordents
First bar of Goldberg Variation 7, first played with lower mordents, then without — 134 KB
Problems listening to the file? See media help.
Confusion over the meaning of the unadorned word mordent has led to the modern terms upper and lower mordent being used, rather than mordent and inverted mordent. Practice, notation, and nomenclature vary widely for all of these ornaments, and this article as a whole addresses an approximate nineteenth-century standard. In the Baroque period, a Mordant (the German equivalent of mordent) was what later came to be called an inverted mordent and what is now often called a lower mordent. In the 19th century, however, the name mordent was generally applied to what is now called the upper mordent. Although mordents are now thought of as just a single alternation between notes, in the Baroque period a Mordant may sometimes have been executed with more than one alternation between the indicated note and the note below, making it a sort of inverted trill. Mordents of all sorts might typically, in some periods, begin with an extra inessential note (the lesser, added note), rather than with the principal note as shown in the examples here. The same applies to trills, which in Baroque and Classical times would standardly begin with the added, upper note. A lower inessential note may or may not be chromatically raised (that is, with a natural, a sharp, or even a double sharp) to make it just one semitone lower than the principal note.
Turn
A short figure consisting of the note above the one indicated, the note itself, the note below the one indicated, and the note itself again. It is marked by a mirrored S-shape lying on its side above the staff.
The details of its execution depend partly on the exact placement of the turn mark. The following turns:
might be executed like this:
The exact speed at which the notes of a turn are executed can vary, as can its rhythm. The question of how a turn is best executed is largely one of context, convention, and taste.
The lower added note may or may not be chromatically raised (see mordent).
An inverted turn (the note below the one indicated, the note itself, the note above it, and the note itself again) is usually indicated by putting a short vertical line through the normal turn sign, though sometimes the sign itself is turned upside down.
Appoggiatura
Appoggiatura (pronounced [əˌpɒʤəˈtʊ(ə)ɹə] in English, [appodʤaˈtuːɾa] in Italian) comes from the Italian verb appoggiare, "to lean upon". The long appoggiatura is important melodically and often suspends the principal note by taking away the time-value of the appoggiatura prefixed to it (generally half the time value of the note, though in triple time, for example, it might receive two thirds of the time). The added note (the unessential note) is one degree higher or lower than the principal note; and, if lower, it may or may not be chromatically raised (see mordent).
The appoggiatura is written as a grace note prefixed to a principal note and printed in small character, usually without the oblique stroke:
This would be executed as follows:
Appoggiatura
A passage with two phrases ending in appoggiaturas, followed by these phrases without them — 160 KB
Problems listening to the file? See media help.
Appoggiaturas are also usually on the strong or strongest beat of the resolution and are approached by a leap and leave by a step.
Musicians' mnemonic: the appoggiatura is longer than the acciaccatura because it is podgy.
So-called unaccented appoggiaturas are also quite common in many periods of music, even though they are deprecated by some early theorists (for example CPE Bach, in his Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen). While not being identical with the acciaccatura (see below), these are almost always quite short, and take their time from the allocation for the note that precedes them. They are more likely to be seen as full-size notes in the score, rather than in small character – at least in modern editions.
Acciaccatura
Acciaccatura (pronounced [əˌʧækəˈtʊ(ə)ɹə] in English, [atʧakkaˈtuːɾa] in Italian) comes from the Italian verb acciaccare, "to crush". The acciaccatura (sometimes called short appoggiatura) is perhaps best thought of as a shorter, less melodically significant, variant of the long appoggiatura, where the delay of the principal note is scarcely perceptible – theoretically subtracting no time at all. It is written using a grace note (often a quaver, or eighth note), with an oblique stroke through the stem:
The exact interpretation of this will vary according to the tempo of the piece, but the following is possible:
Whether the note should be played before or on the beat is largely a question of taste and performance practice. Exceptionally, the acciaccatura may be notated in the bar preceding the note to which it is attached, showing that it is to be played before the beat. (This guide to practice is unfortunately not available, of course, if the principal note does not fall at the beginning of the measure.)
The implication also varies with the composer and the period. For example, Mozart's and Haydn's long appoggiaturas are – to the eye – indistinguishable from Prokofiev's and Moussorgsky's before-the-beat acciaccaturas.
In some cases on instruments that permit it, such as the piano, the acciaccatura is sounded simultaneously with the principal note, and then immediately released.
Glissando
Main article: Glissando
A glissando is a slide from one note to another, signified by a wavy line connecting the two notes
Ornaments in Bach
Ornaments in the music of JS Bach (and to an extent in Baroque music generally) take on a different meaning. Most ornaments occur on the beat, and use diatonic intervals more exclusively than ornaments in later periods do. While any table of ornaments must give a strict presentation, consideration has to be given to the tempo and note length, since at rapid tempos it would be difficult or impossible to play all of the notes that are usually required. One realisation of some common Baroque ornaments is set in the following table, made by J.S. Bach's father, Johann Ambrosius Bach[2]:
Renaissance / early baroque ornaments
From Silvestro Ganassi's treatise in 1535 we have instruction and examples of how musicians of renaissance and early baroque decorated their music with improvised ornaments. Michael Praetorius spoke warmly of musicians' "sundry good and merry pranks with little runs/leaps".
Until the last decade of the 16th century the emphasis is on divisions, also known as diminutions, passaggi (in Italian) or glosas (by Ortiz) - a way to decorate a simple cadence or interval with extra shorter notes. These start as simple passing notes, progress to step-wise additions and in the most complicated cases are rapid passages of equal valued notes - virtuosic flourishes. There are rules for designing them, to make sure that the original structure of the music is left intact. Towards the end of this period the divisions detailed in the treatises contain more dotted and other uneven rhythms and leaps of more than one step at a time.
Starting with Archilei (1589), the treatises bring in a new set of expressive devices called graces alongside the divisions. These have a lot more rhythmic interest and are filled with affect as composers took much more interest in text portrayal. It starts with the trillo and cascate, and by the time we reach Francesco Rognoni (1620) we are also told about fashionable ornaments: portar la voce, accento, tremolo, gruppo, esclamatione and intonatio.[
Main article: trill (music)
A trill is a rapid alternation between an indicated note and the one above, also known as the shake. Usually, if the music containing the trill was written before 1800 the trill is played by starting a note above the written note. If the music was written after 1800 then the trill is usually played by starting on the note written and going up to the note above. A printed score will often indicate which interpretation is to be used, either in the preface to the score or by using a grace note.
Sometimes it is expected that the trill will end with a turn (by sounding the note below rather than the note above the principal note, immediately before the last sounding of the principal note), or some other variation. Such variations are often marked with a few grace notes following the note that bears the trill indication.
The trill is indicated by either a or a ~~, with the ~ representing the length of the trill, above the staff. In Baroque music sometime the trill is indicated with a + (plus) sign above or below the note.
Mordent
The mordent is thought of as a rapid single alternation between an indicated note, the note above (called the upper mordent, inverted mordent, or pralltriller) or below (called the lower mordent or mordent), and the indicated note again.
The upper mordent is indicated by a short squiggle (which may also indicate a trill); the lower mordent is the same with a short vertical line through it:
This can also be called a turn
As with the trill, the exact speed with which the mordent is performed will vary according to the tempo of the piece, but at moderate tempi the above might be executed as follows:
Mordents
First bar of Goldberg Variation 7, first played with lower mordents, then without — 134 KB
Problems listening to the file? See media help.
Confusion over the meaning of the unadorned word mordent has led to the modern terms upper and lower mordent being used, rather than mordent and inverted mordent. Practice, notation, and nomenclature vary widely for all of these ornaments, and this article as a whole addresses an approximate nineteenth-century standard. In the Baroque period, a Mordant (the German equivalent of mordent) was what later came to be called an inverted mordent and what is now often called a lower mordent. In the 19th century, however, the name mordent was generally applied to what is now called the upper mordent. Although mordents are now thought of as just a single alternation between notes, in the Baroque period a Mordant may sometimes have been executed with more than one alternation between the indicated note and the note below, making it a sort of inverted trill. Mordents of all sorts might typically, in some periods, begin with an extra inessential note (the lesser, added note), rather than with the principal note as shown in the examples here. The same applies to trills, which in Baroque and Classical times would standardly begin with the added, upper note. A lower inessential note may or may not be chromatically raised (that is, with a natural, a sharp, or even a double sharp) to make it just one semitone lower than the principal note.
Turn
A short figure consisting of the note above the one indicated, the note itself, the note below the one indicated, and the note itself again. It is marked by a mirrored S-shape lying on its side above the staff.
The details of its execution depend partly on the exact placement of the turn mark. The following turns:
might be executed like this:
The exact speed at which the notes of a turn are executed can vary, as can its rhythm. The question of how a turn is best executed is largely one of context, convention, and taste.
The lower added note may or may not be chromatically raised (see mordent).
An inverted turn (the note below the one indicated, the note itself, the note above it, and the note itself again) is usually indicated by putting a short vertical line through the normal turn sign, though sometimes the sign itself is turned upside down.
Appoggiatura
Appoggiatura (pronounced [əˌpɒʤəˈtʊ(ə)ɹə] in English, [appodʤaˈtuːɾa] in Italian) comes from the Italian verb appoggiare, "to lean upon". The long appoggiatura is important melodically and often suspends the principal note by taking away the time-value of the appoggiatura prefixed to it (generally half the time value of the note, though in triple time, for example, it might receive two thirds of the time). The added note (the unessential note) is one degree higher or lower than the principal note; and, if lower, it may or may not be chromatically raised (see mordent).
The appoggiatura is written as a grace note prefixed to a principal note and printed in small character, usually without the oblique stroke:
This would be executed as follows:
Appoggiatura
A passage with two phrases ending in appoggiaturas, followed by these phrases without them — 160 KB
Problems listening to the file? See media help.
Appoggiaturas are also usually on the strong or strongest beat of the resolution and are approached by a leap and leave by a step.
Musicians' mnemonic: the appoggiatura is longer than the acciaccatura because it is podgy.
So-called unaccented appoggiaturas are also quite common in many periods of music, even though they are deprecated by some early theorists (for example CPE Bach, in his Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen). While not being identical with the acciaccatura (see below), these are almost always quite short, and take their time from the allocation for the note that precedes them. They are more likely to be seen as full-size notes in the score, rather than in small character – at least in modern editions.
Acciaccatura
Acciaccatura (pronounced [əˌʧækəˈtʊ(ə)ɹə] in English, [atʧakkaˈtuːɾa] in Italian) comes from the Italian verb acciaccare, "to crush". The acciaccatura (sometimes called short appoggiatura) is perhaps best thought of as a shorter, less melodically significant, variant of the long appoggiatura, where the delay of the principal note is scarcely perceptible – theoretically subtracting no time at all. It is written using a grace note (often a quaver, or eighth note), with an oblique stroke through the stem:
The exact interpretation of this will vary according to the tempo of the piece, but the following is possible:
Whether the note should be played before or on the beat is largely a question of taste and performance practice. Exceptionally, the acciaccatura may be notated in the bar preceding the note to which it is attached, showing that it is to be played before the beat. (This guide to practice is unfortunately not available, of course, if the principal note does not fall at the beginning of the measure.)
The implication also varies with the composer and the period. For example, Mozart's and Haydn's long appoggiaturas are – to the eye – indistinguishable from Prokofiev's and Moussorgsky's before-the-beat acciaccaturas.
In some cases on instruments that permit it, such as the piano, the acciaccatura is sounded simultaneously with the principal note, and then immediately released.
Glissando
Main article: Glissando
A glissando is a slide from one note to another, signified by a wavy line connecting the two notes
Ornaments in Bach
Ornaments in the music of JS Bach (and to an extent in Baroque music generally) take on a different meaning. Most ornaments occur on the beat, and use diatonic intervals more exclusively than ornaments in later periods do. While any table of ornaments must give a strict presentation, consideration has to be given to the tempo and note length, since at rapid tempos it would be difficult or impossible to play all of the notes that are usually required. One realisation of some common Baroque ornaments is set in the following table, made by J.S. Bach's father, Johann Ambrosius Bach[2]:
Renaissance / early baroque ornaments
From Silvestro Ganassi's treatise in 1535 we have instruction and examples of how musicians of renaissance and early baroque decorated their music with improvised ornaments. Michael Praetorius spoke warmly of musicians' "sundry good and merry pranks with little runs/leaps".
Until the last decade of the 16th century the emphasis is on divisions, also known as diminutions, passaggi (in Italian) or glosas (by Ortiz) - a way to decorate a simple cadence or interval with extra shorter notes. These start as simple passing notes, progress to step-wise additions and in the most complicated cases are rapid passages of equal valued notes - virtuosic flourishes. There are rules for designing them, to make sure that the original structure of the music is left intact. Towards the end of this period the divisions detailed in the treatises contain more dotted and other uneven rhythms and leaps of more than one step at a time.
Starting with Archilei (1589), the treatises bring in a new set of expressive devices called graces alongside the divisions. These have a lot more rhythmic interest and are filled with affect as composers took much more interest in text portrayal. It starts with the trillo and cascate, and by the time we reach Francesco Rognoni (1620) we are also told about fashionable ornaments: portar la voce, accento, tremolo, gruppo, esclamatione and intonatio.[
Jumat, 02 Mei 2008
History of music
Music is found in every known culture, past and present, varying wildly between times and places. Scientists now believe that modern humans emerged from Africa 160,000 years ago. Around 50,000 years ago these humans began to disperse from Africa reaching all the habitable continents. Since all people of the world, including the most isolated tribal groups, have a form of music, scientists conclude that music must have been present in the ancestral population prior to the dispersal of humans around the world. Consequently music must have been in existence for at least 50,000 years and the first music must have been invented in Africa and then evolved to become a fundamental constituent of human life[1].
A culture's music is influenced by all other aspects of that culture, including social and economic organization and experience, climate, and access to technology. The emotions and ideas that music expresses, the situations in which music is played and listened to, and the attitudes toward music players and composers all vary between regions and periods. "Music history" is the distinct subfield of musicology and history which studies music (particularly western art music) from a chronological perspective.
A culture's music is influenced by all other aspects of that culture, including social and economic organization and experience, climate, and access to technology. The emotions and ideas that music expresses, the situations in which music is played and listened to, and the attitudes toward music players and composers all vary between regions and periods. "Music history" is the distinct subfield of musicology and history which studies music (particularly western art music) from a chronological perspective.
Definition of music
Greek philosophers and medieval theorists defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies, and vertically as harmonies. Music theory, within this realm, is studied with the presupposition that music is orderly and often pleasant to hear. However, in the 20th century, composers challenged the notion that music had to be pleasant by creating music that explored harsher, darker timbres. The existence of some modern-day music genres such as death metal and grindcore, which enjoy an extensive underground following, indicate that even the harshest sounds can be considered music if the listener is so inclined.
20th century composer John Cage disagreed with the notion that music must consist of pleasant, discernible melodies. Instead, he argued that any sounds we can hear can be music, saying, for example, "There is no noise, only sound,".[1] According to musicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez, "the border between music and noise is always culturally defined--which implies that, even within a single society, this border does not always pass through the same place; in short, there is rarely a consensus.... By all accounts there is no single and intercultural universal concept defining what music might be."[2]
The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of music vary according to culture and social context. Music ranges from strictly organized compositions (and their recreation in performance), through improvisational music to aleatoric forms. Music can be divided into genres and sub-genres, although the dividing lines and relationships between music genres are often subtle, sometimes open to individual interpretation, and occasionally controversial. Within "the arts", music can be classified as a performing art, a fine art, or an auditory art form.
20th century composer John Cage disagreed with the notion that music must consist of pleasant, discernible melodies. Instead, he argued that any sounds we can hear can be music, saying, for example, "There is no noise, only sound,".[1] According to musicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez, "the border between music and noise is always culturally defined--which implies that, even within a single society, this border does not always pass through the same place; in short, there is rarely a consensus.... By all accounts there is no single and intercultural universal concept defining what music might be."[2]
The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of music vary according to culture and social context. Music ranges from strictly organized compositions (and their recreation in performance), through improvisational music to aleatoric forms. Music can be divided into genres and sub-genres, although the dividing lines and relationships between music genres are often subtle, sometimes open to individual interpretation, and occasionally controversial. Within "the arts", music can be classified as a performing art, a fine art, or an auditory art form.
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