*Exploring syntax through the metaphor of music as text.* ## Music as Poetry We\'re now moving up from lines to sections of music. How are sections organized? Just like text, music can be divided into poetry and prose. In poetry, phrases usually come in pairs, parallel phrases of the same length in the same meter. In prose, phrase lengths and meters vary. Most music -- anything downstream from \'song\' -- uses parallel structures like poetry. Let\'s build up this idea: ### Poetry 1: Repeated Pairs (AA) The simplest relationship a pair of phrases can have is exact repetition. This is common in dance forms, which traditionally take the form AABBCC... ![[PUBLISH/media/music-as-text-media/image1.png]] Performed by Avi Avital: ![[bucimis.mp3]] Tam Lin (Irish, by Davey Arthur): Performed by Chris Haigh: ![[tamlin.mp3]] ### Poetry 2: Open / Close (A A\') You'll notice that the previous examples almost repeated perfectly --- but not quite. Where are the exceptions? **At the endings**. Well-formed music exhibits **hierarchies of closure.** The end of the piece should feel more final than the end of a section, which should feel more final than the end of a phrase, etc. (Muddle this hierarchy at your own risk.) So in *Tam Lin*, for example, we have a pair of matching 4 bar phrases. The closure at the end of the full 8 bars is a 'bigger deal' than the closure after 4, and so to signal that the 8 bars is complete, its ending is slightly stronger. Notice that the actual change is very small --- stopping on E instead of leading away with E D, one eighth-note difference, but it is enough. The endings in Bučimiš are very similar. This introduces the relationship of 'open/close.' In the simplest form, two phrases are the same except that one stays open and the other closes it. Often closure is created tonally, by a return to the tonic, with 'openness' ending somewhere else. Dance music in the 13th-16th century often used this form. We also hear open/close in the first two phrases of Ornette Coleman\'s *Lonely Woman.* **Write two phrases that open and close.** ### Poetry 3: Rhyme (End Rhyme: ABCB\') Rhyme -- Echo -- Recognition -- Resemblance -- Resonance -- Return -- Circles When two words rhyme, their sounds resemble each other, and we experience something like an echo, a piece of the past in the present. In music, we experience the same echo whenever we hear something that resembles something we have recently heard. That resemblance can be in the pitches, in the rhythms, the text, or elsewhere. It can be a direct resemblance, or it can be oblique, changed, the familiar mixed with something new. A listener has a flash: \"I recognize that. I am not lost.\" Self-similarity is the essence of music \"making sense.\" Music that is rich in self-similarity is rich in meaning, because it is the returning that shows us that a thing matters, that a thing is a thing at all. When music refers back to itself, it invites us inside, it sparks a collaboration with our memory. (Our perception enters a higher-level cognitive process: it jumps up from from \'scanning\' for patterns to \'checking\' the patterns we have apprehended.[^1]) Another way to think about it is as a kind of sympathetic resonance. Something in the present rings something in the past, because of what they have in common. In this view, a music that has one event repeating incessantly is supremely resonant, but at a narrow frequency, like a shrill electronic beep. A music with many events that resemble each other in a variety of ways is resonating richly across a wide spectrum, like a deep bell. An echo folds back time. The forward arrow of change circles back to touch a moment in the past. \"We have returned to a familiar place,\" we feel, \"to take a different fork in the road.\" We have completed a loop. A unit has closed. Try the rhyhming couplet -- two lines that are different, but whose endings echo each other. Arriving at the second, we are linked back to the first, closing another loop in the chain. The rhyme can be \'perfect\' or many kinds of \'slant.\' Write two 2-bar phrases that have different beginnings and similar endings. ### Poetry 4: Front Rhyme (ABAC...) Now flip it: parallel phrases with similar beginnings. You can think of this as 'front rhyme,' or when the beginnings are identical, the rhetorical device **anaphora.** Here's some Johnny Cash: **I keep** a close watch on this heart of mine **I keep** my eyes wide open all the time **I keep** the ends out for the tie that binds Because you're mine, I walk the line. Here is that same structure in an 8 bar phrase: This is the heart of a **period,** a phrase structure ubiquitous in Classical music, which also can be seen as an 'open/close' form (HC = Half Cadence = End on V; PAC = Perfect Authentic Cadence = End on I.) Write two 2-bar phrases that have similar beginnings, or try an 8 bar phrase like the 'Johnny Cash' or a Classical period. ### Poetry 5: Enjambment Compare the flow of this quatrain from *Romeo and Juliet*: A glooming peace this morning with it brings.\ The sun for sorrow will not show his head.\ Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things.\ Some shall be pardon\'d, and some punishèd. To one from *The Winter's Tale*: I am not prone to weeping, as our sex\ Commonly are; the want of which vain dew\ Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have\ That honourable grief lodged here which burns\ Worse than tears drown. The first projects a solemn, rectilinear formality; the second, an easy, spontaneous flow. We have the same choice in music. For example: In A, each 2 bar phrase ends with a full stop. In B, the 2-bar boundaries are increasingly blurred with pickups, ties, and 'connective tissue' that flows over the bar lines. Stepping back, it's easy to see A as neatly divided into 4 subphrases. B looks more like a single 8 bar phrase. **Take a phrase you've already written, and develop it as in B, creating extra flow across the bar lines.** ## Music as Prose ### Time's Circle, Time's Arrow We experience two 'flavors' of time in music: the arrow and the circle. The arrow begins at the beginning and runs to the end. That's line, development, dramatic arc, trajectory, process. Circles form whenever something recurs. Listen to the first movement of the Ravel string quartet. Just past the page turn, we get an ending, and then the first bars happen again. It's as if we started over, returned back after a short walk to our starting point, reset, turned back the clock. It's not enough to say, then, that the music that comes after "comes after," because in a way **it is also unfolding on top of the music that happened before**. Recurrences create a sort of wormhole simultaneity, where we experience the present and past together. Form is delineated by these points of \'starting over.\' The more we make those recurrences consistent and predictable, the more like poetry it is. Recurring metric cycles spinning inside recurring phrase cycle, recurring patterns of rhymes. Everything unfolding in parallel pairs, and pairs of pairs, and pairs of pairs of pairs. When the phrases come in irregular lengths, it's more like prose text. Without deep rhythms of recurrence to orient us, we look to other strategies to organize our music. In music, rhyme is actually *more* important in prose. Without parallel rhythmic patterns to create relationships, we must consciously create other resemblances, echoes, connections. Write forward by reaching back and repurposing material you have written. ### Prose Strategies: Widening Circles Let's look at the opening of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. ![[rite.mp3]] Stravinsky uses anaphora to organize a long flow. The bassoon begins, digresses, then returns to the beginning, digresses a different way, returns again. A dialog emerges between several sharply defined characters. The **expanding circle** gives the whole section a shape and a direction. The top of the circle, the opening motive, initially comes back quickly, then the digressions get longer and longer; the circle expands, the camera close-up slowly pulling back to reveal a world. Write a short figure. Write a series of phrases that start short and get longer and longer, that each begin with the figure and are followed by a different digression. ### Prose Strategies: Tightening Circles Similarly, closure can be created by tightening the circles of repetition. Here the first three notes becomes a recurring motif that marks a rhythm that accelerates - 2 bars, 2 bars, 1 1 1. We are \"circling the drain.\" In Indian music, the tightening circle appears in the device tihai, which is used for endings of solos or pieces (always following the Rule of Threes), as in this Tarana in Malkauns. It cues closure through propulsion, as in the fragmentation phase of a Classical sentence.  > Beethoven, Op. 2 No. 1 ![[beethoven op2 no1.mp3]] And in an extreme form is the geometric buildup in modern dance music. ![[sandstorm.mp3]] > Darude. Sandstorm (2000) (A phrase hits every 8 bars... then every 4 bars... then every 2... 1... 1/2 1/4 1/8 to a drum-fill blur...) Cheesy as it is, it's a good way to understand what's happening when you tighten the circle. You establish a pattern that helps the listener know that something is coming, and when. You're pointing to a future moment in time and saying "this is important" and leading them by the hand to that moment. In the Beethoven Sonata, it's the climax of the phrase (after a Ready, Aim, Fire). In the Tarana, it's the end of the song. In modern dance music, it's the drop or return ofthe theme. One more example, from Maurice Ravel's String Quartet in F Major.  Notice how the first 8 bars are built around an arch up and down in the cello and 2nd violin. The circle tightens: now (in the violin) we have an (inverted) arch that only takes two bars, then the up and downward motion is combined (third system, first bar), and the circle tightens to 1 bar, propelling us to the end of the section. **Starting with a phrase you have written before, extend and close it by tightening a circle.** ### Prose Strategies: Punctuation What we want to avoid when we write music is to have one character who is - talking endlessly, is - hard to follow and - never gets to the point. One way to avoid the monotony of \#1 is to use punctuation. Speak in sentences with beginnings, middles and ends, commas and periods, white space between paragraphs. You can take this idea figuratively or literally. Let's try literally. Invent two or three "punctuation marks" and write a few short phrases ending with them. For example: These work to delineate syntax in two ways. First, they literally stop the forward motion and this creates clear segmentation of the stream. Second, after they happen a few times they become *familiar.* Remember our Ur form, the circle of union and separation, which is the rhythm of sameness and difference. The form is the rhythm of recurrence. Once we\'ve heard the \'comma\' and \'period\' a few times, they become familiar points of return, completing circles, separating adventures. This is why the \'cadence\' in many musical styles is the most formulaic part of a phrase. ### Prose Strategies: Dialogue Another way to break up a monologue is to create different characters in dialogue. Listen again to the opening of *The Rite of Spring*. There are a few clear characters right away: the bassoon, the horn, the clarinets, the oboe. They are **sharply characterized**, as opposed to one of those boring movies where everybody seems to talk the same way, be equally clever, etc (like Aaron Sorkin or Gilmore Girls). Here, it's not just the sounds that are distinct but also what they say. The horn moves on a slower time scale than the bassoon. The clarinets only move by half steps in locked 4ths. The oboe has its own kind of folktune birdsong. Create 3 characters. Define them with words first. What are their personalities, attitudes, characteristics? What kinds of sounds do they make? What kinds of rules can you invent for the music you'll write for them? Write a few bars of the characteristic music for each character. Having multiple instruments helps define characters, but you can create a dialog with one instrument too. To really make them clear, exaggerate the differences between them. Or listen to Bach Cello Suites and hear how leaps alone can create independent voices in conversation. --- # Practice Write a piece of musical poetry or prose. I want to see: - Good melodic shapes, inspired by our work last week. - Clear phrase divisions. - Rich interconnections using rhyme and parallel structures. - Beginningness and endingness. - At least 32 bars. [^1]: Margolis, H. (1987). Patterns, thinking, and cognition: A theory of judgment. University of Chicago Press. [^2]: