Music Appreciation, Questionnaire Example

What are the four characteristics of musical sound?

Pitch, duration, intensity, and timbre are the four characteristics of musical sound.

What are the six classifications of voices?

Women typically sing in soprano, mezzo-soprano, and contralto; men usually  sing in tenor, baritone, and bass classifications.

What are the four families of orchestra instruments?

An orchestra is divided into the strings, woodwinds, bass, and percussion.

What are the four most common instruments within each family?

For strings, the violin, viola, guitar, and cello are the four most common instruments, for woodwinds, the flute, piccolo, oboe, and clarinet, for bass, the trombone, trumpet, baritone, and tuba, and for percussion, the cymbals, snare drums, and bass drums (Kernan & Tumlinson, 2008).

How is the beat in music related to the meter? What about tempo?

Beat and tempo follow meter as a system of the measurement of time. Music might be played in 2/3 time or ¾ time, for example, to give the instrumentalists an idea of how quickly they are playing. Complicated pieces, such as many of Mozart’s masterpieces have many 1/8 and 1/16 notes when the music quickly goes up and down the staff, so these pieces require more detail. The melody occurs one note at a time and chains together the individual notes and themes.

A melody is comprised of two components. What are they?

Pitch and duration are the two basic components of melody. Pitch includes the sharpness or depth of a notes, and duration just means how long or short the notes in the melody are.

How does harmony support a melody?

The reason that many musical instruments have their own individual sheet music for a large orchestral composition is because the entire harmony layers different musical pieces to complement each other. The overall result produced by the layers of a composition create the texture.

How do consonance and dissonance affect a harmonic progression?

Dissonance creates a feeling of tension or being unfinished. It would be like building the suspense in a story. If there is no climax, then the story resolution might feel unsatisfying. The consonance resolves the tension in the harmony and the melody. This is where form influences the music and vice versa. Form cannot be different in every single composition, so many composers choose to use the same basic form and layer the texture and harmony over the bare bones of the music (‘BINARY AND TERTIARY FORMS”).

What are the three components of a key?

The sharpness, timbre, and accent of a key are the three components. Sometimes the term tone is used to mean key. The accent determines the way in which the notes are played- crisp, sloppy, strong, etc.

What are the three types of texture in music?

The three types of texture are monophonic, polyphonic, and homophonic. In monophonic textures, the voice parts create the harmony be chanting together or by layering the same melody in a round. In polyphonic textures, two to four different singers overlap their different parts to create one strong texture which follows similar lines. In homophonic textures, the singing part is paired with some simple music, as it was commonly done during the Baroque period (Estrella).

What are three considerations of form in music and what is their function?

Repetition is one of the forms in music, but its three main considerations are passage, piece, and cycle. Repetition is part of the cycle, as the segment loops in support of the music. When the music cycles, it rearranges the same patterns in the music so that they create new accompaniments, melodies, and harmonies. The piece refers to the type and genre of the music, as well as the general rules which hold over each different genre.

Which is the more versatile form – binary or ternary – and why?

Ternary forms is more flexible because it does not have many definite rules. Binary form must repeat in a certain order to fit the definition. The formulas for each type of the form allow for change and surprise. (“Binary and Ternary Forms”).

References

“Binary and Tertiary Forms”. (n.d.) Florida State University. Web. Retrieved from http://mailer.fsu.edu/~nrogers/Handouts/Binary_Ternary_Form_Handout.pdf.

Estrella, E. “Musical Texture: Types of Musical Texture”. About.com. http://musiced.about.com/od/beginnerstheory/a/Musical-Texture.htm.

Kerman, J. & G. Tomlinson. Listen. 7^th ed. Bedford St Martins. 2008. Print.