Letter from Jack (1/5)

Dear Concert Orchestra,

Thank you for your focus and attention last night. Many young musicians might have looked at our first leg of rehearsal where we learned about the seven elements of music and took diligent notes as boring, wasted time. Your rapt attention and sense of buy-in proved something that I have long suspected about this orchestra: you’re not just talented young musicians (that’s becoming a given at GTCYS) – you’re also great thinkers who care about details, in life and music.

See below for a summary of the Seven Elements of Music. I challenge you to find another musical idea that cannot be broken down further into one or more of these elements! (TEXT is the 8th element of music for choral pieces. Text doesn’t count).

I Form:  The structure of a musical composition. 
II Pitch: The highness or lowness of a sound. 
III Harmony: The quality of two or more notes played at the same time. 
IV Rhythm: The placement of sounds in time. 
V Timbre: The defining characteristic of a sound.  “Like a unique musical fingerprint” 
VI Texture: The different layers or VOICES in a piece of music
VII Dynamics: The intensity of a sound. 

For next week:

We’re off to the races this semester. We have a great deal of challenging repertoire to learn in a finite period of time.

An assignment for ALL students in Concert Orchestra: 

• Listen to Overture to the End of a Century 3 times and answer the following question:
• “What is the most important element of music in this piece?”
• There are many ways to answer this question- I leave it up to you. Feel free to email me with your answer if (like me), you get excited about analyzing music and need to share your ideas. Here is my email: jack@gtcys.org

And here is a recording of the Overture: 

For your personal Practice:

Next week is sectionals for our wind, brass, and percussion players.

Wind, Brass, and Percussionists, please focus your practice efforts on Overture to the End of a Century. You will spend the vast majority of your time on this piece in sectionals. Work out the notes, focus on the hard stuff, and listen to a recording (found below). You’ll want to be as prepared as possible to get the most out of your time with these excellent teachers.

STRINGS: In addition to your listening assignment for Overture to the End of a Century., please put your practice energy into Beethoven Symphony 7, Movement II (Allegretto). Get a good fingering for each passage, and start to think about the musical effect your right hand should be making in each section of this piece.

I’m looking forward to hearing your personal progress next week!

Jack.