News & Comments

13 Sunday Jan 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, Music, United States

Tags

Canada, Frederick A. Verner, If Ye Love Me, National Rifle Association, News, Renaissance English Music, Thomas Tallis, United States

Landscape by Frederick Arthur Verner

Frederick Arthur Verner (Upper Canada, 26 Feb 1836; d at London, Eng 16 May 1928).

“His mellow vision conveyed an image of the Canadian West as a secret garden, an oasis of calm and quiet, rather than the tragic battlefield portrayed by many American painters.” (“Frederick A Verner,” The Canadian Encyclopedia)

Photo credit: unknown source

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What a week! It took me two days to write “More on the Second Amendment,” and I could have used a third day. But, while digging, it occurred to me that members of the National Rifle Association (NRA) were acting in violation of the Second amendment. The Second amendment is obsolete because the US has long had law-enforcement mechanisms, ie. “a well regulated militia.”[i] But not only is it obsolete, it is also flawed.

To be clear it should read “a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, [in the absence of a well regulated militia],[ii] the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” But it does state, unequivocally, that a well-regulated militia is “necessary to the security of a free state.” Neither the settlers nor the NRA can be considered a well-regulated militia and by advocating a civilian’s right to own and bear firearms, the NRA now jeopardizes “the security of a free state.”

And there is good old-fashioned common sense. How can anyone shoot someone else without a firearm? It is the sine qua non of gun shooting.

In interview(s) General Stanley Allen McChrystal stated that the most offensive weapons were the military weapons. He is absolutely right. But a rifle or a handgun can also kill. There have been many gun-deaths since Newtown. See gun-death tally.

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[i] The U.S. Cavalry was active from 17 November 1775 until 1951. See US Cavalry in Wikipedia

[ii] Or something to that effect.

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composer: Thomas Tallis (c. 1505 – 23 November 1585 [by the Julian calendar; 3 December 1585, by the Gregorian calendar])

title: “If Ye Love Me” (anthem)

performers: the Cambridge Singers

director: John Rutter (b. 1945)

Thomas Tallis

NRA President: Assault weapons ban not likely to pass Congress (washingtonpost.com)
The “Manifest Destiny” & the News (michelinewalker.com)

Counterpoint & Harmony: examples

08 Thursday Dec 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Music

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Gilles Binchois, Guillaume Dufay, homophonic, monophic, Mozart, polyphonic, Requiem, Thomas Tallis

Guillaume Dufay & Gilles Binchois

Polyphony was invented by the Greeks. It is part of Western Europe’s Græco-Roman heritage. Guillaume Dufay (August 5, 1397 – November 27, 1474), Gilles Binchois (c. 1400 – 20 September 1460), and Johannes Ockeghem (1410–1425 Belgium – February 1497) contributed to the development of polyphony (Franco-Flemish school).

The examples I have used below are taken from Wikipedia and YouTube. (Please donate to Wikipedia. Small donations add up.)

* * *

Monophonic music

one voice (that could constitute the cantus firmus, or melody, of a piece to which voices would be added)
eight “measures”

* * *

Homophonic music

four voices (polyphonic)
sung simultaneously

Thomas Tallis "If ye love me"

Homophony in Tallis’s (c. 1505 – 23 November 1585) “If ye love me,” composed in 1549. The four voices move together using the same rhythm, and the relationship between them creates chords: the excerpt begins and ends with an F major triad. (Wikipedia)

* * *

Contrapuntal polyphony

Four voices
polyphonic, but not chordal (not played simultaneously)

Fugue bar

Above is a bar, or measure, taken from J.S. Bach‘s “Fugue No.17 in A flat”, BWV 862, from Das Wohltemperierte Clavier (Part I), a famous example of contrapuntal polyphony. (Wikipedia)

The numbers indicate finguering. They do not refer to the position of the chord: root position and inversions. During the baroque period, it was not unusual simply to provide musicians with a figured bass from which they “realized” the chords.