2.3 Melodic phrases  (Page 3/3)

Phrases in instrumental music

Objectives and assessment

• Time Requirements - Combined with Phrases in Songs , one (approximately 45-minute) class period.
• Objectives - The student will listen to examples of instrumental music and identify the phrases in the music.
• Evaluation - Assess students on their ability to accurately identify phrases in a "test" situation. Allow the students to listen to a short musical excerpt that the class has not yet discussed. Then play the excerpt again, calling on specific students to indicate by word or gesture when they hear the end of a phrase, or asking students to count the number of phrases in the example and write down their answers. For the test, use music in which the phrasing is very clear, and not ambiguous at all, or allow for some reasonable disagreement if students can support their conclusions.

Materials and preparation

• If your students do "Phrases in Songs" successfully, let them try this activity.
• You will need a tape or CD player and some recordings.
• Try to choose instrumental music that also has singable melodies with clear, separated phrases. Bach and other Baroque composers are usually not a good choice, nor is most modern classical music or music based on shorter motifs, or music that is too complex.

Procedure

1. The procedure is essentially the same as for the previous activity. Let the students hum phrases to you if they can, or simply signal when they hear a new one.

Parallels between language and musical phrasing

Objectives and assessment

• Time Requirements - one (approximately 45-minute) class period.
• Objectives - The student will study the text of a song, identifying (grammatical) sentences, phrases and clauses. The student will listen to the song, identifying musical phrases. The student will compare grammatical and musical phrasing, and draw appropriate conclusions.
• Evaluation - Analyze one text together, as a class. Then have the students do a second analysis individually, as a worksheet to be completed during the class period and turned in.

Materials and preparation

• To do this activity, students must already be comfortable identifying musical phrases, and also identifying sentences, phrases, and clauses in texts.
• Choose a song or two to analyze for grammatical and musical phrasing. Art songs, madrigals, songs from musicals, and some rap, pop, and rock lyrics are all good sources for this, as well as folk songs, hymns, and children's songs.
• Obtain copies of the song text(s) for the students to look at. You may make handouts, for students to complete as a worksheet, or look at a projected copy of the text together and discuss as a class.

Procedure

1. Begin by analyzing the texts as the students have been doing in language arts. This may include identifying complete sentences, phrases, dependent and independent clauses, etc. If appropriate, you may also want to study the song lyrics as poetry texts, identifying metaphors, etc.
2. Have the students mark sentences, clauses, etc., on their handouts in whatever way is standard in their language arts class, or call on students to identify them aloud, while you mark the projected copy of the text.
3. Have the students listen to the song several times. Ask them to mark the musical phrases in a different way (or in a different color) than the grammatical phrases (or to signal where you should mark on the projected sheet). Play the song as many times as necessary to allow the students to decide where the musical phrases end.
4. Have the students compare the grammatical and musical phrasing as marked. Do they line up completely? If there are any places where they don't line up, what seems to be the reason for the disconnect? Is it related to the emotional content of the song? To certain aspects of the music or the text? Does the musical phrasing emphasize any aspect of the text (metaphors, questions, arrangement of clauses into sentences, etc.)?
5. If you are going to ask the students to analyze a second song individually, leave plenty of time for this, even if it means not finishing the analysis of your example. Do enough of the first example,as a group, to give them a clear idea of the procedure. Then give them 20 to 30 minutes (depending on the length of the song) to do their analysis of the second example, using the same marking style, and answering any questions you want included. Play the second song several times while they are analyzing and writing about it.

Suggested music

Music that has clear phrases is very common, but there is some music in which phrases are harder to identify. In general, steer clear of Baroque counterpoint (Bach, for example), modern Classical music, the more complex styles of jazz, and late Romantic composers such as Mahler and Wagner. Folk songs, pop musics (including rock and country), children's songs, hymns, marches, dances, ragtime, opera arias, and symphonic music that has a clear melody are all good places to look. In case you're still not sure where to start, here are some suggestions that should be easy to find.

Some easy-to-find instrumental music with clear phrases

• Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer", or other ragtime tunes
• The Largo movement of Dvorak's Symphony No. 9
• The "March of the Toreadors" from Bizet's Carmen
• The "Waltz of the Flowers", "Chocolate (Spanish Dance)", "Tea (Chinese Dance)", or "Trepak (Russian Dance)" from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker
• Almost any popular march
• Most dixieland or swing-era jazz tunes

Vocal music with clear phrases

• This is so easy to find there is no point in my listing particular pieces for you to look for. Most folk and popular vocal music has clear, separate, easy-to-hear phrases, as do most songs from musicals.