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Из курса от партнера Yale University

Introduction to Classical Music

1447 оценки

Yale University

Introduction to Classical Music

1447 оценки

Using a simple and enjoyable teaching style, this course introduces the novice listener to the wonders of classical music, from Bach fugues to Mozart symphonies to Puccini operas.

Из урока

What Is Music?

Every day around the world, billions of people listen to music of one sort or another, and millions listen to Western classical music. Why do we do it? Because it’s fun? Because it energizes or relaxes us? Because it keeps us current, allows us to understand what’s happening in past and popular culture? The pull of music--especially classical music—has never been explained. The aim of this course is to do just that: To explicate the mysteries and beauties of some of Western cultures greatest musical compositions—among them masterpieces of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, and Puccini. We begin with the elements of music, breaking classical musical into its components of pitch, duration, and sound color, allowing us to better understand how music works. Next, we proceed to the compositions themselves, starting with the Middle Ages and Renaissance, to show how Western music developed in ways unique to the West. Ultimately, we reach the masters, commencing with Bach. What makes his music great? Why does it move us? What should we listen for? And so we proceed down through Western musical history, visiting virtually the people who created it and the places where they did so. By the end, we hope all of us have become more human (enriched our personalities) and had a rollicking good time!

Course Preview13:20

Познакомьтесь с преподавателями

Craig Wright
Henry L & Lucy G Moses Professor of Music
Department of Music

Hello.

Well, we're now finished filming all 24 hours of our course,

introduction to classical music.

And you might be wondering, what you might be getting into,

what kind of experience you might have here?

Well let's take a preview.

The first six sessions tell us why music matters, why it moves us so

much, why so many people listen to it every day.

And they provide the technical information that you'll need to

fully enjoy classical music.

By technical information, I mean what we'll need to know about.

How music works, at it's most basic level.

About rhythm, melody, harmony, and so on.

How technical is this going to get?

Well, here's a sample moment from our discussion of rhythm in music.

Rhythm is a bit more complicated.

Rhythm is the organization of time into compelling patterns of long and

short sounds.

Here's a famous melody, one created by the French composer Maurice Ravel

from his ballet Bolero of 1928.

There is a tune, a succession of higher and lower pitches shown vertically,

and there is a rhythm moving left to right.

Now lets strip away pitch and leave the rhythm alone and

it will look like this as we see on our next slide.

But what we hear first at the beginning of Bolero, is not the melody but

another rhythm.

This one.

And it's played by a snare drum.

Now, a snare drum, as you may know, has no particular pitch.

It just plays a rhythm, pure rhythm.

I'll tap it.

[MUSIC]

And that's all the snare drum player does.

So he better write that pattern.

He's going to be doing it for the next 14 and a half minutes.

Now, beneath the snare drum pattern,

low strange play, another rhythm that provides something of a harmony.

Let's take a look at that now.

[NOISE] And

so on.

Eventually the flute enters, adding the enchanting melody.

So now we have three rhythms operating here.

One in the flute, which also carries the melody.

One in the snare drum, which is a simple or pure rhythm.

And the third in the bass,

which is providing something of a harmony below the melody up above.

So we have three rhythms that are staying within and

emphasizing the structure of the measure.

Three different rhythms sounding simultaneously,

three different patterns of longs and shorts.

Having learned about the elements of music, what makes music work?

We'll move on now to listening to great pieces of classical music.

Starting with Gregorian Chant and working up to the Renaissance, and

then the Baroque Era.

Here's a sample from the Baroque Era, featuring music by Handel,

the composer of course of the oratorical Messiah.

But here, we're discussing the music for the royal fireworks, again by Handel.

Combined with them is the English group, The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

I'll comment as we go.

[MUSIC]

Starting with replica of natural trumpets, no vowels

[MUSIC]

So here's the minuette.

Notice that the tempo of course is much slower.

I would say that the playing is a lot cleaner.

[MUSIC]

This was a difficult technique, this clarino playing from the Baroque era.

Only specialists could do it.

[MUSIC]

Obviously overdo the oboes.

See the old oboe, in the middle of the orchestra, authentic performance practice.

What we don't see here is a conductor.

The first violinist is conducting, and that's correct.

There were no conductors standing and waving batons in those days.

So the first violinist is conducting here.

And he's very, very,

[MUSIC]

The natural horns.

[MUSIC]

Pretty impressive.

Next we go on to a discussion of classical music,

with Haydn and specially with Mozart.

But here, let's look at a clip demonstrating how classical Beethoven

constructs a symphony, specifically his Eroica, or heroic, symphony.

During most of these years, Beethoven was living here, at the Pascualati House,

which happened to be on the ramparts of the old fortress.

So, when Napoleon unleashed his hundreds of cannons at the old city fortresses,

well, Beethoven had a ringside seat.

And although he was nearly deaf, he was terrified by the sound and

the destruction of the cannons.

Well anyway, enough about Beethoven and the poem.

Let's get to the music.

To do so, we'll start with the opening sounds of the Eroica Symphony.

Let's see what's revolutionary about it.

As we listen, you identify three things,

three ways in which this music differs from Mozart of Haydn.

What is Beethoven doing here that Mozart, for example, would not have done?

And here again we're going to employ a video made by Steve Melanosky.

Two hammer strokes right at the beginning.

Then the theme appears, not in the first violins like we would expect but

in the cellos.

[MUSIC]

Now the woodwinds take over the theme.

Takes it up a step.

Up another step.

[MUSIC]

And now we get ready for

some heavy-handed syncopation.

[MUSIC] More syncopation.

Now, everybody in!

Full orchestra.

[MUSIC]

From a live classroom, to an online mode of delivery,

such as we have in our online course here,

we knew we had to take music and make it less audio and more video.

We knew that the Internet is not good at delivering quality sound.

But it is good at letting us see how things work, even see how music works,

hear animations, and diagrams, and video clips of all sorts.

They all allow us to understand, to demystify,

classical music as we see here in famous passage from a song of Gustave Mahler.

As the text at the end says,

I have escaped into a solitary world of love and music.

A love for music.

[FOREIGN] In my love and in my song, my music song.

You're being a metaphor for all music.

Let's listen to this beautiful piece as conducted by Claudio Abbado and sung by Magalina Piscina

[MUSIC]

[MUSIC]

[MUSIC]

[MUSIC]

[MUSIC]

[MUSIC]

[MUSIC]

[MUSIC]

[MUSIC]

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[MUSIC]

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[MUSIC]

Finally we've tried to be creative.

And in so doing, sometimes we came close to creating out own new art forms.

As you see in this last clip from a discussion

of the post-modernist music of Phillip Glass.

So we have just this repeated note and then this,

[MUSIC]

And then, slowly, seventh chord will be introduced.

[MUSIC] And then another one, but

another one going against it.

[MUSIC]

Opposite direction, one coming down as one goes up.

[MUSIC]

And then he would double the tempo and run them both up and down simultaneously.

[MUSIC]

In that fashion.

So let's hear a bit of the original composition flow by Phillip Glass, and

as we do so, as these arpeggios are going up and down against themselves,

we'll look at this visual image.

Each of these squares is a rectangle against itself.

You can study these rectangles or these mirror images as the music plays.

[MUSIC]

Okay maybe we'll

pause it.

>> I hope you can see that we've tried to be creative with our introduction to

classical music, we've tried to have some fun.

For as we know in music, or

anything else in life, we all are more engaged when we're having fun.

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