Chopin- Nocturne op.48 no.1 in C minor (extract)

Chopin was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1810, and died in 1849. He is most famous for his piano works. This piece is a Nocturne, meaning that it was written for night-time parties. This can be heard in the slow and tired, but stately feel of the piece. It is also just written for piano, and we know that by the Romantic period pieces were being written just for single instruments (or at least, instrument and accompaniment).
The melody comes in right away, and throughout this extract, it moves mostly in small intervals, with some large intervals used to create drama and tension in various places. It is all legato, with pedal written in throughout the whole extract, to add an even more legato feel. The phrases are not easily distinguishable, as with most music that comes before it, and are not balanced or at all symmetrical. There is not much sequencing in the melody either, but one example is bars 3 and 4 in the right hand, where, although the rhythmic units are not the same, the intervals are very, very similar. In bars 5 to 8, we get a melody that is similar to the beginning, but altered slightly. The note values in the melody are very varied- everything from semibreves to crotchets to semiquavers to sextuplet semiquavers. This adds a great amount of interest to the piece because nothing about it is predictable (except that the left hand always has chords).
The accompaniment (left hand) plays chords throughout, to maintain the sense of key/tonality. Its chords are mainly based around octaves, with every other chord simply being an octave pattern. It keeps the beat, as it has a stable crotchet pattern. This helps the audience because from the melody, we cannot hear a clear four-crotchet-beat pattern (the piece is in 4/4).
As the piece goes along, the note lengths get shorter, meaning that the harmonic rhythm gets faster, thus the piece becomes more and more 'interesting' as it develops.
The texture in this piece is quite thin, because it only has the two hands on the piano in it.
The piece is in C minor, but being from the Romantic period, and being Chopin, there are a lot of accidentals put in for effect. The tonality seems to change in bar 9, when it goes major for a short while; This is because of the Db's that come in. However this does not last very long, and we soon return to the minor feel as the Db's are again naturalised. The tonality comes into question at bar 21, when the melody has a long chromatic section, with lots of accidentals. However then we are again brought into C minor, when the melody has two triplets, on the tonic and the dominant (C and G) and then finishes on C.


An inspiring quote from Chopin:
“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.”
(http://www.biography.com/people/frédéric-chopin-9247162#synopsis&awesm=~oFJXxVESjN7bYm)
I think this is heard very clearly in this piece!

I used this recording by the great pianist Ashkenazi. The extract finishes at 2:22.

Trois Nouvelles Etudes- No.2 in AbM by Chopin: a look at Harmony/Tonality

I am currently studying this piece and think that it is wonderfully interesting in its use of harmony and tonality, because it seems to change its tonality (and at the very least, it's different harmonies) a lot. The piece was written in 1839, as part of a collection of pieces written as instruction for playing the piano.
The piece starts in AbM, but in bar 4 Gb's come in, and this lasts for 5 bars, putting it into DbM. It is immediately apparent that the piece has come into the subdominant key. Next however, the G's are again naturalised (middle of bar 8), so we go back to AbM. Then in bars 17 and 18, there are lots of accidentals which appear to change the key about- although many of the accidentals written are simply enharmonic equivalents of notes already in the key. Later, in bars 25-29, we get a passage where the key does change a lot, from Cm to C#m, to Dm, to D#m, and finally to Em. This chromatic section builds tension, up to the release when we arrive at Em- the dominant key. A bar later both the Db and the Ab are naturalised, putting us in BbM. A bar after that, the Eb is also naturalised, putting us in FM. Later we return to the A section of the piece (which starts in AbM and continues on to the aforementioned keys). For the end of the piece (bars 49-60), the piece returns to AbM, and apart from bars 51 and 52 where the Eb is naturalised, briefly giving a bit of interest but not altogether changing the key, we remain in AbM until the end.
As for the structure of the piece, the overall structure (macrostructure) is ABA (binary), and the microstructure is that both hands maintain their jobs throughout, with no overlap in what they do. The right hand has its chords played in a triplet rhythm from bar 1 to the end of the piece, whilst the left hand has quavers that directly go against the right hand rhythm, which have large intervals between each note, and more importantly, each pair of quavers.
There are very few dynamics written into my copy of the music (which is an Urtext edition), which indicates that Chopin did not include very many into the original. The only dynamics that there are are a  p at the very beginning of the piece, so that the beginning of the piece comes in very quietly, paving way for the rest of the piece's drama. The next, and final dynamic marking written in is a [f] in bar 29, this means that it is editorial, and Chopin probably didn't even want it written in. It comes directly after the massive chromatic build that we get in bars 25-28, thus emphasising that this part is the climax of the piece.


This is a performance of the piece by the amazing pianist Anthony Horowitz. (I love his use of voicing!)

William Byrd (1543-1623) - Ave Verum Corpus

William Byrd was composing during a time when all of England was converted to Anglicanism. This meant that the use of Latin was not permitted in religion. Therefore the fact that Byrd uses Latin in many of his pieces, like this one, was highly dangerous. Byrd composed for Catholic services, usually in Latin.
The title of this piece means 'Hail the true one/person'- i.e. Christ. This shows that the piece is Sacred.

The bar lines in the piece are not in the notes, but in the lyrics. This shows that a greater emphasis was placed on the words and meaning of the piece than the notes themselves. The fact that the piece is syllabic emphasises the meaning of the words, because the words can be heard clearly, rather than having the melody being the only thing that is decipherable. The homophony of the piece also adds to this.

The piece would have been sung when the bread and wine were held up. The fact that Byrd was a Catholic meant that he believed in the bread at mass being the 'True Body' of Christ, which the prominent Anglicans would not have thought, hence in the piece, in bars 2 and 3, the word 'verum' is given emphasis because Byrd uses a false relation with the Superius and Bassus parts (F# and F natural).

In Bars 31-33, there are big-interval jumps in the Superius and Medius parts (5th's) as the text is referring to Jesus. These fifths hearken back to the Medieval period, when fifths were predominant in religious music. The use of the big intervals also emphasises this part of the piece, drawing attention to Jesus.


Help from:
http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/images/b/bb/Byrd-ave_verum_corpus.pdf
http://musicologicus.blogspot.co.uk/2007/07/william-byrd-ave-verum-corpus.html
http://a2ocr.edublogs.org/files/2009/05/Byrds-Mass-for-Four-Voices-Notes.pdf

Louis Spohr- Zwiegesang Op.103 No.2

The man

• (5 April 1784 – 22 October 1859)
• Violinist, conductor, composer
• Wrote ten symphonies, ten operas, eighteen violin concerti, four clarinet concerti, four oratorios and various works for small ensemble, chamber music and art songs
• Fun fact: he invented the violin chinrest
• Style: between Classicism and Romanticism

My chosen piece: Zwiegesang Op.103 No.2 (doesn't start until 0:18)

• Structure: short Introduction, Exposition including Modulation, Instrumental, Second section including modulation
• Clarinet- to have a conversation with the voice, Soprano voice- main part and piano- generally plays broken chords 
• The voice part is much more ornamented than the other parts
• Begins with the piano introducing the key with an arpeggio, then the clarinet comes in with tenuto notes on the tonic (0:20)
• Clarinet continues with a legato melody that is not very ornamented, only once and on the last few notes there are trills (0:26)
• The clarinet part then plays with this melody throughout, using it to introduce the voice in the call-and-response theme that continues for the voice and clarinet throughout much of the piece. It is also used to introduce changes key (e.g. at 0:52)
• Extensive use of crescendos and diminuendos (not anything like terraced dynamics)
• Very lyrical style- it is probably Lied 
• Simple, "safe" harmony throughout, provided almost entirely by the piano, as the clarinet plays mostly at different times to the voice, or in unison with it
• Tonality is major, with a few minor bars in the middle (0:53-0:59) 
• Some use of tempo changing, e.g. there are small ritardandos at e.g. 0:45 and 2:05 and one at the end of the piece
• Polyphonic texture
• Mostly quaver movement