Music Animation Machine

QuickTime Movies

Viewer’s Guide

page

Introduction ...... 2

Viewing QuickTime movies ...... 2

Notes on the examples

Johann Sebastian Bach In Dulci Jubilo ...... 3

Trio Sonata IV, third movement ...... 4

Ludwig van Beethoven Bagatelle, opus 33, no. 5 ...... 5

Johannes Brahms Capriccio, opus 76, no. 2 ...... 6

Stephen Malinowski Fugue (to Stanley Krebs) ...... 8

Troubleshooting ...... 10

More information ...... 10 Introduction — a score for listeners of all ages

Conventional music notation evolved to serve the needs of composers, performers, and conductors. By contrast, the Music Animation Machine is a musical score for listeners. The Music Animation Machine (MAM) is an animated visual display that represents a musical performance. The display is synchronized with the sounds of the piece it represents. Instead of the symbols of conventional music notation, a MAM score uses colored bars to represent the notes of a piece. The vertical placement of each bar indicates the pitch of its note, the horizontal placement indicates its timing relative to the other notes of the piece, and the length of the bar shows its duration. These bars scroll across the screen as the piece plays; when a bar reaches the center of the screen, it brightens as its corresponding note sounds. The center of the screen is always the “now” point. A MAM score is like a conventional musical score in that it gives information about the pitch and timing of the notes of a piece. As in conventional notation, musical events at different points in the piece can be seen at once, allowing recognition of and comparison between patterns. Unlike a conventional score, the MAM uses a single “pitch space.” In conventional notation, different instruments are distinguished by placing the notes for each instrument on its own staff. This makes it difficult to see the relationship between the notes of two instruments, since the viewer must mentally combine two or more staves into one. In MAM notation, all the notes are on the same “staff,” with different instruments indicated by color. MAM notation shows the actual irregular timings of notes in a performance, not the mathematically exact timings of conventional notation. The MAM notation can be colored to highlight thematic units, instrumentation, harmony, or dynamics. MAM scores can be understood by very young children: children as young as eighteen months have demonstrated that they recognize the relationship between the sound and the visual display. Many people are visually oriented and more able to pay attention to visual objects than sounds. This may be the reason that a visual analogue to a piece of music makes it more real to children.

Viewing QuickTime movies

In an attempt to keep download times to a minimum, the resolution of the QuickTime movies has been reduced from what is used in the videotapes. The result is that viewers must choose between image size and image quality. If the image is small, it will scroll smoothly and look clear but it may be hard to see all the notes (especially the shortest ones). If the QuickTime window is resized to make the image larger, the notes will be easy to see, but the scrolling will be jerky and the bars may have little dots in them.

In the future, when Internet connection speeds are higher and ISP traffic charges are lower, the resolution of these movies will be increased. Until then, the way to see the scrolling scores at their best is to view them on videotape (and, hopefully, soon, DVD).

2 Johann Sebastian Bach In Dulci Jubilo

This setting of the tune In Dulci Jubilo (which you may know as “Oh Christian Men Rejoice”) is a double canon. A canon is a compositional technique in which one part imitates another according to some rule (hence the name).

In this piece, the soprano voice (oboe, light green) starts with the tune, and the tenor voice (bassoon, dark green) imitates it a measure later, down an octave. The alto (organ, light violet) accompanies the soprano in notes that move three times as fast, and the bass (organ, dark violet) imitates it a measure later. This can best be seen at the opening of the piece:

The canon is “strict” (meaning exact) through the first 0:40 or so of the piece, but then things change, first a little, then a lot. With the phrase beginning in the soprano at 0:42, the tenor imitates after two measures instead of just one:

And then, after the tune ends (about 0:51), the soprano takes off, and from then on, the counterpoint is not canonical, but “free” (not following any rule):

Here’s the whole piece:

3 Johann Sebastian Bach Trio Sonata IV, e minor Third movement, un poco Allegro

Like many of the movements of Bach’s organ trio sonatas, this one is quasi-fugal. As in a strict fugue, the appearance of the theme at the beginning alternates keys. However, unlike a strict fugue, the theme does not appear unaccompanied at the beginning. (A small point.) The theme appears first in the right hand (flute) ...

and as soon as it is through, it is joined by the left hand (English horn) ...

... and when the left hand is done with the theme, there’s a little sequence (to build up the listener’s anticipation) ...

... and then the theme appears in the pedals (bassoon) ...

Actually, “pedals” is a bit of a misnomer here, since the piece is not being played on the organ. I’ve taken advantage of this by restoring the theme in the pedal part to its original form (Bach had substituted a simpler version to make it playable with the feet).

4 Ludwig van Beethoven Bagatelle, opus 33, no. 5 Piano

A bagatelle is a kind of musical trifle, a short, often light-hearted piece. Beethoven wrote many of these, often as preliminary explorations of musical ideas he later incorporated into longer, more serious works. However, Art Weber has suggested that in the case of this particular piece, Beethoven might have been thinking of another meaning of the word: in his time, “bagatelle” also referred to the mechanical game we now call pinball.

Is the opening theme an imitation of a ball being launched ...

... followed by a couple of bounces ?

Toward the end of the piece, it even sounds as if a ball has gotten stuck and the player is trying to shake it loose ...

In this rendition, color is used to demarcate different types of textural material.

5 Johannes Brahms Capriccio, opus 76, no. 2 Piano

Because this piece is played on a single instrument and is not structured contrapuntally (at least, not in the usual sense), I’ve used color to show things about tonality, using a scheme I call Harmonic Coloring (more about this at www.well.com/user/smalin/pfifth.htm ), in which the colors in the artist’s color wheel are assigned to pitches in the musician’s circle of fifths:

The Brahms Capriccio opens in the tonic (home key) of the piece, B minor (which is I — blue in the coloring scheme). An important thing to notice is the bass part, which starts on I and descends chromatically (literally!):

The chromatic motion next appears in a sustained inner voice:

With the second theme of the piece, the tonality moves from the tonic (I) to the relative major (III; also called the mediant); notice how the palette has shifted toward green:

In the contrasting middle section of the piece, the detached movement (that characterized the original melody) is transferred to the bass, and a more lyrical melody appears in the top voice. The tonality is now very far removed from the tonic:

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The middle section ends with a dramatic transition ...

... back to the tonal area of the beginning. Unlike the beginning, however, the descending chromatic scale is on top ...

In the next variation, the chromatic scale is back on the bottom, but it’s jumping up an octave for every step down (here’s where having it in color comes in handy)...

As we approach the end, the smooth chromatic inner voice again becomes prominent ...

... and finally the piece slows to a gentle stop ...

7 Stephen Malinowski Fugue to Stanley Krebs Piano

Stanley Dale Krebs (1928-1977) was a talented performer, a gifted composer, a gentleman, a scholar, and a mensch. He was also the only composition teacher I ever had who understood why a 20th century composer (such as myself) would want to write fugues. A fugue-lover himself, he was the regular instructor of Canon and Fugue at the University of California at Santa Barbara (where I studied composition). I often visited him during his office hours to play fugues with him, 4-handed, at the piano. After he died (alas, too soon!), I wrote this fugue in his memory. The first fugue Stanley and I ever played together was the G-minor fugue from the second book of the Well-Tempered Clavier. My fugue to Stanley took the key (at least, the key signature; it’s hard to say what key the piece is in), the meter, and the first two notes (in reversed order) from that fugue. Here’s the theme:

With the first notes (which tend toward minor), I tried to suggest mourning, and with the latter, a more uplifting feeling. When the second voice does the scales, the first voice imitates it, forming a sequence:

The soprano enters third, but its entrance is nearly hidden by the other voices; only as it continues through the rising part of the theme does it assume its rightful place on top ...

At the end of the soprano’s statement of the theme, it is the octave leap which the other voices imitate ...

8 Typically, the stretto of a fugue (a place where two or more parts have the theme in a highly overlapping way) is saved for the latter part of the piece, where its intensity helps make a good climax. In this fugue, however, the stretto (and the climax) happens earlier (the tenor, in red, starts, and the soprano, in yellow, follows) ...

The rest of the piece is more of a dénouement, a reverie of reminiscence; when the alto reaches the descending scales in the theme, two other voices join it ...

... and then the theme starts disintegrating; here, the repeated notes of the theme are alternated between the tenor and bass ...

... and when the bass reaches the scale section, all of the voices follow it ...

Fugue-wise, we’re clearly not in Kansas anymore!

As the “endless staircase” continues, the tenor discreetly drops out, and then quotes the theme from the WTC fugue ...

... and here, the octave leap is split between the alto and the other voices ...

In the final chord, the tenor (which, since I play the viola and sing tenor, stands for me), on the fifth of the chord (the most unresolved tone in the chord) refuses to let go ...

9 Troubleshooting

The most common problem people have with these QuickTime movies is that there’s no sound. This usually results from having a version of QuickTime that’s too old to have the proper decoder for audio that’s been encoded with the ODesign encoder. To get the latest version of QuickTime, visit this site:

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/

If that doesn’t solve your problem, please contact me:

More information about the Music Animation Machine ...

... can be found at the MAM web site:

www.musanim.com

ver. 1, Stephen Malinowski, March 2003

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