[Rhodes22-list] One of My Favorites

[Rick]

Slim,

The affect of language on melody is profound.  I lived in a traditional West
African community inhabited by two tribal groups, both with tonal
languages.

The majority tribe has a language of hunters useful for long distance
communication.  Every syllable begins with a hard consonant with a lot of
"desert", "dessert" situations.  And their numbering system is base five.
So their music is very rhythmic with lots of syncopation using an augmented
pentatonic scale.

The language of the minority group sounds almost like Italian.  And their
music sounds like arias.  The melody of Amazing Grace is commonly attributed
to people of this tribe.

The thing is, dual speakers never use the words of one language to the
melodies of the other.  That would be a song of gibberish.

Rick

On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 5:30 PM, Slim Chance <slimsails at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello, Lee.  It's hard to imagine and silly to think about Foxworthy taking
> anything so seriously as playing the flute in the orchestra, but he's all I
> could think about while watching that guy.  So 70s!
>
> Re Tchaikovsky, The Russians tried not to like him because his compositions
> were so Germanic -- sort of like Beethoven -- and not at all Russian.  They
> saw him as something of a turncoat.  In fact he spurred a movement of other
> Russian composers, e.g., Rimsky-Korsekov, Mussorgsky, Borodin, Balakirev
> and
> Qui to form what became know as the "Mighty Five" who undertook to write
> specifically Russian music.  Nevertheless Tchaikovsky continued to win over
> the hearts of people with his wonderful sense of melody, imagination,
> orchestration, etc. and the nation was rocked by his death at age 53.  A
> controversy to this day, some say he died of Cholera and others say suicide
> because of his admitted homosexuality.  But, yeah, I love his stuff too!
>
> A little tidbit on typical Russian melody:  The Russian language has no
> articles -- "a" or "the" -- so when we say "The cup is on a table" they
> would say "Cup is on table."   Western European melodies, both folk
> melodies
> and formal classical melodies we often use "pick-up" notes. For example in
> "Happy Birthday"  the "Happy" is a pick-up and "Birth" comes in on beat
> one.  Or in "Amazing Grace" the "A" is a pick-up and "Maz" is beat one.
> Still with me?  The technical musical term for this is called an anacrusis.
> When we say "The cup is on a table" the '"the" is like a pick-up and
> "table"
> is beat one.  Russian melodies rarely use pick-up notes in their melodies
> and most often begin right on beat one so that  parallels their language as
> it should.  In "Cup is on table"  "Cup" is beat one.  Tchaikovsky's
> melodies
> are filled with pick-ups therfore very un-Russian.
>
> Class dismissed.
>
> Slimsky Slimsnakovskya  8-)
>
> On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 11:06 AM, Leland <LKUHN at cnmc.org> wrote:
>
> >
> > Slim,
> >
> > Excellent--thanks for sharing.  "You may be a redneck" if you associate
> > Foxworthy with Bernstein, although the resemblance is uncanny.
> >
> > We had two classes in school where they would take a picture of each
> class
> > and if someone was in your seat every time you received an "A" and for
> each
> > class you missed you could make it up with a short paper.  The classes
> were
> > Theater Appreciation and Music Listen Lab.  Unfortunately I mistakenly
> > enrolled in Music Appreciation which was absolutely one of the most
> > difficult and time-consuming classes I ever took.  In retrospect it may
> > have
> > been the most useful class because I've spent far more time listening to
> > classical music than using anything else I learned in college.  I still
> > love
> > Rock-n-Roll but it's tough to beat Tchaikovsky's greatest hits.
> >
> > Lee
> > 1986 Rhodes22  AT EASE
> > Kent Island, MD
> >
> >
> >
> > Slim Chance wrote:
> > >
> > > Some of you remember me as a rocker but I grew up with a classical
> > > background.  Back in the the 60s There was a weekly TV program called
> > > Leonard Bernstein's Young Peoples' Concert which I never missed.  I
> > > believe
> > > LB to be arguably the greatest American musician of all.  Maybe Louis
> > > Armstrong, Bernstein, Armstrong, Bernstein Armstrong.  Obviously for
> > > different reasons.  But check this out and please also watch the second
> > > part
> > > where he conducts the reprise with his face alone.  This video also
> > > features
> > > Jeff Foxworthy on flute!
> > >
> > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlURvraEmeY
> > > __________________________________________________
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> > >
> >
> > --
> > View this message in context:
> > http://old.nabble.com/One-of-My-Favorites-tp31772916p31777889.html
> > Sent from the Rhodes 22 mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
> >
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