Fall Festival--Celebrating Contemporary Music

We are in the final month of preparation for Fall Festival now. I enjoy doing this festival each year because it gets all of my students off to a great start in the fall. Whenever there is a recital or an event that they are working toward, they work harder and concentrate more. At the September class lesson, they shared their music with each other (memory wasn’t required). At the upcoming October class lesson, they will share the same pieces, memorized this time, and much more refined, ready for festival and recital.

The focus of Fall Festival is to introduce students to contemporary sounds. I will review of few in this blog post and provide links for some examples. Maybe you can look and see which categories are present in your music. Often contemporary composers will use more than one of these categories in their compositions. These characteristics are very distinct from other eras of composition.

Melody

1. Melodies are fragmented, irregular, or disjunctive.

2. Significant parts of the piece, or even the whole piece, lack melody.

3. The melody is constructed by chance or serial technique. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bkQa2Rowvw

4. The melody is built from non-traditional scales such as modes, a scale with “blue” notes, etc. Some examples of Taylor Swift music with different modes: Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixUpXB2zJ8M

   Harmony

   1. Chords are unrelated to a major-minor system—clusters, altered chords, quartal or quintal harmony. Here’s an example of quartal harmony (uses 4th’s) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2loKj2-SU4

   2. The composer makes simultaneous use of two chords or keys (bitonality).

   3. The piece is not in any definable key (atonality).

   4. Unresolved dissonance is common. (Henry, Bradley, Katie, Ellie, Qing Shuang, Jack, Myla)

   Rhythm

   1. The piece or large parts of it contain no bar lines.

   2. The meter is irregular, such as 5/4. (Sloane) Here’s an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPRtRoH4zcA. See if you can count along (9/8: count 2,3,2,2)

   3. There are frequent meter or tempo changes. (Sam, Zaria)

   4. Cross rhythms (polyrhythms)—5 against 4, 7 against 8, etc.—are prominent.

   5. Jazz rhythms prevail. (Walker, Adam, Peter, Quinn)

   Other considerations

   1. Non-traditional notation.

   2. Knocking, tapping or plucking some part of the instrument not traditionally used in this way. (Lawrence)

   3. Use of prepared piano. Only do this with permission from the owner of the piano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgph8aPmRJs

   4. Use of extreme range on the instrument.