Assignment 5

1.    Describe Jazz music. Where did it come from, and what makes it particularly unique to Americans?

Jazz music is a type of popular music characterized by improvisation on popular melodies and a swinging rhythm.  Jazz music is a language that is inspired by ones passion and life time experiences.  Jazz music originated by African American musicians in the early 1900s in New Orleans and now is performed worldwide.  Jazz music was one of America’s greatest cultural achievements.  The music brought Americans together by uniting people of all races and people who lived in different regions across the country.  Jazz music was filled with passion always had moving words about freedom and what it meant to be an American.  The musicians sang about personal experiences.  Overall people could relate to jazz music and the songs spoke to them.  The rise of jazz music was a very positive and important part of our nation’s history.  One of my favorite jazz songs is Don’t Stop the Music by Jamie Cullum.  I love the music video to this song because it is centered around musical instruments and shows how powerful they truly are.  Musical instruments are what make up the backbone of a song. In this song you can hear all different kinds of percussion instruments that make this song have such a great beat, but the piano is what carries the rhythm of this song.  In the beginning Cullum is simply just tapping his hands on the wood of the piano establishing a solid rhythm for this song and then the harmonizing melody of the piano comes in.  Watching this music video and listening to the rhythm and words of the song allowed me to able to get a feel for what jazz music really is and that I should listen to it more often.  The music is very soothing and would be a nice change from all the loud and popular music that I listen to today.

 Don't Stop The Music by Jamie Cullum

2. In Peter and the Wolf, what instruments play Peter, the duck, the wolf, the bird, Grandfather and the Hunters?
Peter was played by the strings in the orchestra

The duck the oboe

The wolf the French horn

The bird the flute

The Grandfather the bassoon

The Hunters the timpani drums.

Peter and The Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev

 

Classical music was the period of music from about 1750-1810, the time of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven; the music embodies clarity of form and logic of development.  The classical period is distinguished from classical music in general.  Because the classical period was expanded over thousands it was organized into six historical periods, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Contemporary.  Classical music’s audience is usually better educated, wealthier, and increasingly older, which was to the dismay of music administrators and marketers.  When attending a classical music event people are expected to dress very nice, this makes classical music have a certain prestige or an awful stigma.  For most people it is more work listening to classical music because you need to fully concentrate on the music to get the full meaning and effect of the music.  But, if you put forth the time you will get more out of the music and have a better understanding of what you were listening too.  Since I played piano for eight years when I was younger, I always enjoyed listening and learning about Beethoven.  By having to look at some of his work such as, Moonlight Sonata, I got to appreciate classical music and the amount of effort classical musicians put into their musical pieces.      

Moonlight Sonata composed by Beethoven