Let's get started.

We are going to continue our discussion of melody,

and last Thursday we were talking about melody in terms of

scales: major scales, minor scales, chromatic scales.

Then we went on to talk a little bit about what it is in a

melody that makes us feel the way we do about that particular

melody-- the major and minor quality of

them, and the fact that that quality

shows up rather early on in the scale,

the third step of the scale.

Then we talked about conjunct melodies,

and disjunct melodies, and we ended up talking about

Beethoven's Ode to Joy, which he incorporated in the

last movement of his last symphony,

Symphony no. nine.

And we said that that had a particular quality of phrase

construction--antecedent and consequent phrase structure.

>

Opening it up--<<plays piano>>

--and closing it back down.

And I was thinking over the weekend of all the pieces that

operate that way.

>

Antecedent--<<plays piano>>

--consequent.

And then it goes on with an extension the way Beethoven went

on with an extension-- >

Antecedent-- <<plays piano>>

--consequent.

I was a thinking of a piece of Mozart--<<plays

piano>>

Was that really Mozart?

Well let's listen here to just a little bit of what that really

is.

Okay.

>

All right.

That's enough of that.

Dumb pet trick.

All I did was take the theme of the Macarena and strip

away all the rhythmic stuff underneath,

and put an eighteenth-century Alberti bass with it,

that Mozart would have used--<<plays

piano>>

--and so on.

But the point here is that even the Macarena is using

this antecedent and consequent phrase structure--something as

basic as that.

So it's sort of endemic to how melodies are constructed.

Now I was thinking--and I always like to try to come up

with new, however albeit lame-brained,

ideas--for teaching this class.

Supposing I got a student up here, I mean melody--what makes

a melody beautiful?

What makes a great melody?

Anybody know?

Well, if you do, let me know,

because I don't know, and nobody really knows.

It's sort of like the definition of pornography:

you know it when you see it, or you know it when you hear

it.

So in pursuit of this, I was trying to think,

"Well, maybe I'll have a student come up and try to craft

a melody right here on the spot."

And I supposed we could play with that,

but then I said, "That's probably not a

good idea, because a) No student would

really want to do this, and b) It would probably take

too long to work through all the aspects of it."

So what I did--and this was about four o'clock yesterday

afternoon--and I thought, "Craig,

you think up a melody."

So I started thinking up a melody, and I hope I can

remember how it went.

>

Something like that.

So what would you give me as a grade for that melody?

Come on, now.

Daniel, what do I get for that melody?

B minus? C plus?

Student: B..

Prof: B?

Well, this is the days of grade inflation.

I've been inflated up to a B.

It was kind of C, C minus.

It wasn't particularly inspired.

But in crafting that, it made me think of "Why

do I do this at this particular point and not that?"

Well, there are certain confines that we're operating

with.

We've got to be in a scale.

>

Certain kinds of phrases--<<plays

piano>>

--something ending like that in a piece that's going to end

here--<<plays piano>>

--tells me that's got to be in the middle;

that can't come at the end.

So there's a syntax here also.

We've talked about that before, that musical phrases have to

come in a particular order for them to make sense.

So instead of working with my lame-brained melody,

let's work with a great one.

We're going to work a melody by Giacomo Puccini here,

and you can see his name on the board up there,

and get a sense of the melody in question.

It's an aria-- and we'll talk about what an aria is later--but

it's an aria from his opera Gianni Schicchi.

Now, that's not a well-known opera by Puccini;

can anybody tell me the name of a better-known opera by Puccini?

Student: Tosca..

Prof: Tosca, yes.

Student: Madame Butterfly..

Prof: Madame Butterfly.

You haven't hit the most obvious yet--La

Bohème, for example.

Rent was based on La Bohème.

So he has written a lot of well-known operas;

this happens to be a lesser-known opera.

But it has one sort of drop-dead beautiful melody in

the thing, "O mio babbino caro,"

where a young lady is trying, in effect, to con some money

out of her father.

And it's an odd thing, this thing so beautiful--trying

to separate her father from money is an odd thought.

And it occurs rather early on in the opera,

too.

And dramatically, it's not of any particular

significance.

It just happens to be an absolutely gorgeous melody that

you've all heard many, many times.

One day--you'll recognize it as soon as I start to play it--one

day I was playing this at home; my then-thirteen-year-old son

came in and said, "I know that.

That's beautiful."

I said, "Ah, that's my boy.

He's going to be a music lover."

"Yes, that's the background music for Grand

Theft Auto."

"What's Grand Theft Auto, Chris?"

Well, I found out.

But it shows you that this particular aria has legs.

It's kind of everywhere.

So let's listen to a little bit of Puccini's "O mio bambino

caro."

>

Okay, let's pause it right there.

Let's pause it.

>

What's kind of neat about that, right, at the outset

there--<<plays piano>>

What's that?

Why, again, do our spirits soar at that particular point?

We've got a large leap there.

It's the leap of a-- Student: An octave.

Prof: Of an octave.

We wouldn't expect you to recognize that,

but it's interesting to fold that in, because we were talking

about octaves last time.

So we have this opening phrase, and it's about to be coupled--

we're going to continue now-- with the next phrase that will

complete the antecedent phrase.

>

So we're sitting here--can you see the tonic?

That's where we want to go, that's where we want to go.

So we're going to step right above the tonic.

So that's the end of the antecedent phrase,

the opening-up phrase, but we're not on the tonic.

Okay?

So now we're going to continue, and you can imagine we're going

to hear some of that same music.

But ultimately, it's going to come back to the

tonic; we hadn't gone away from it.

Okay.

>

Starting again.

>

Here's our octave.

>

Now, something interesting happened there.

>

Ah, there's our tonic.

We should be back to our tonic.

But that's not exactly what happened.

>

We went to the tonic melody note, but underneath he

harmonized it with an unexpected harmony.

We expected to hear: >

We got: <<plays piano>>

So we were deceived there a little bit.

And musicians call this a deceptive cadence.

When the whole thing has been set up to come back to the tonic

with the tonic chord underneath--<<plays

piano>>

--we get something other than the tonic chord.

So in music, we have to kinds of really

broad categories of cadence.

We have this kind of thing called--<<plays

piano>>

Or: >

--where we come back to the expected tonic.

We call those authentic cadences.

We also have another class of, as mentioned,

deceptive cadences where we do things such as:

>

Where you're expecting to go: >

But we go: <<plays piano>>

Or we go even more bizarre: >

Something like that.

You keep the same tonic note in the melody, but you change the

harmony underneath.

So that's what Puccini has done here.

>

Instead of going there, he goes: <<plays

piano>>

--there.

Here is a silly analogy.

One time I was flying into the city of Minneapolis.

"Fasten your seat belts, trays up,"

etc., etc., etc.; we're coming right in there,

you can see the tarmac there and suddenly the plane goes

"Zoom."

It doesn't land, it does a barrel roll almost

off to the right, circles all the way around,

announces there was some piece of equipment on the landing

strip, and he was doing a flyover.

In music, you have to do the same kind of thing.

If a composer has set this up so that you're expecting to go:

>

And you don't, you go here-- <<plays

piano>>

We can't end that way.

We just can't end that way.

We need our daily supply of tonic.

So what we've got to do is a musical flyover.

He's going to fly all around this thing again,

and then come back in and this time land on the tonic.

So let's listen to the flyover: >

Here's our tonic.

But it's so lovely, he can't stop.

So he's going to give you a little reminiscence of the

beginning-- >

There's our octave.

>

So there's just a little reminiscence of the beginning,

but again coming back and just then, of course,

ending on the tonic.

So that's the structure of an aria by Puccini,

and it is highly structured.

Now I want to talk about another aria that's structured

in a different way, and that's by Richard Wagner.

But before we do that, we need to talk about one other

process in music, and that has to do with

something called melodic sequence.

And oddly, students over the years have had difficulty

understanding and hearing melodic sequence.

But it's a pretty simple idea.

Melodic sequence is simply the repetition of a musical motive

at a successively higher or lower degree of the scale.

So I could take a motive--anybody want to sing a

motive for me here?

Daniel do you want to sing a motive?

Give me four notes.