Section I: Setting the Critical Stage: The Importance of Wondrich’s “Swerve” in Making a Successful Musical Hit Hot and cool, while they are most often used to describe the weather, can also be used to categorize different kinds of music. David Wondrich distinguishes between the “hot” and the “cool” by introducing two concepts, referred to as the “drive” and the “swerve”.1 According to Wondrich: drive is “the quality that gives a piece of music momentum, that…makes your body want to move with the music…”; swerve is captured in the following description: “When Billie Holiday starts slurring her notes, bending away from the melody and then rushing ahead to catch it up, she’s working the swerve.”2 Really good music combines both the drive and the swerve in a way that makes it “hot.” Introducing the “swerve,” Wondrich decides to bring Lucretius, the Roman poet, out of the annals of history. Lucretius’s description of the creation of the world is actually aptly appropriate for a discussion of swerve. Lucretius wrote: “At some uncertain place in …show more content…
The band plays a steady, swinging beat in the background. The only time the volume or intensity of the instruments increases is when Fitzgerald’s own singing grows in intensity. The music seems to move with her, instead of her moving according to the rhythm of the music. At the beginning of the song, the brass plays one introductory note before each phrase of her scat. When she begins to sing, the first instrument the listener can clearly hear enter is the hi hat, being tapped in the classic swing jazz beat. The trumpet also enters at this time. Around 1:13, Fitzgerald next scat solo is introduced by a short brass cadence from the band.22 Throughout the song, one thing the listener should notice is that there is a parallelism between the melody played by the band and Fitzgerald’s scat. This parallel takes place at 2:45, when the band also increases in
Auxier, Richard C. "Reagan's Recession." Pewresearch.org. Pew Research Center RSS, 14 Dec. 2010. Web. 13 Nov. 2013.
Roger Biles, A New Deal for the American people, Northern Illinois university, press, 1991 p.226
"America's Great Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal."DPLA. Digital Public Library of America. Web. 20 Nov 2013. .
During the 1920’s, America was a prosperous nation going through the “Big Boom” and loving every second of it. However, this fortune didn’t last long, because with the 1930’s came a period of serious economic recession, a period called the Great Depression. By 1933, a quarter of the nation’s workers (about 40 million) were without jobs. The weekly income rate dropped from $24.76 per week in 1929 to $16.65 per week in 1933 (McElvaine, 8). After President Hoover failed to rectify the recession situation, Franklin D. Roosevelt began his term with the hopeful New Deal. In two installments, Roosevelt hoped to relieve short term suffering with the first, and redistribution of money amongst the poor with the second. Throughout these years of the depression, many Americans spoke their minds through pen and paper. Many criticized Hoover’s policies of the early Depression and praised the Roosevelts’ efforts. Each opinion about the causes and solutions of the Great Depression are based upon economic, racial and social standing in America.
The Great Depression America 1929-1941 by Robert S. McElvaine covers many topics of American history during the "Great Depression" through 1941. The topic that I have selected to compare to the text of American, Past and Present, written by Robert A. Divine, T.H. Breen, George M. Frederickson and R. Hal Williams, is Herbert Hoover, the thirty-first president of the United States and America's president during the horrible "Great Depression".
zShmoop Editorial Team. "Politics in The Great Depression." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 13 Mar. 2014.
Walter M. Simon The American Political Science Review , Vol. 45, No. 2 (Jun., 1951), pp. 386-399
Folsom, Burton. "Which Strategy Really Ended the Great Depression?" : The Freeman : Foundation for Economic Education. N.p., 24 Aug. 2011. Web. 12 May 2014.
Levine, Linda. “The Labor Market During the Great Depression and the Current Recession”. 19 June 2009. 6 March 2010. < http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/R40655_20090619.pdf>.
Musical theatre is a type of theatrical performance combining music, dance, acting and spoken dialogue. Written by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, ‘West Side Story’ is a classic American musical based on William Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’. The through-composed score and lyrics are used to portray different characters and their cultures, the rivalry between the Jets and Sharks, and the emotions felt as the story progresses. This essay will be exploring the music and how effective the score is in realising the world and characters of the musical. Furthermore, it will discuss how Bernstein and Sondheim relate characters’ diverse ethnicities to particular musical ideas and motifs.
... began the piece, and the beat of the drum was frequent. After the introduction, the rest of the musicians joined. The pianist also had a solo part with the companion of the drum. The pace of the song was moderately fast, and the song ended with a climax.
The movie Lady Day: The Many Faces Of Billie Holiday paints an interesting, and thought provoking portrait of one of jazz and blues most charismatic, and influential artists. The incomparable talent of Billie Holiday, both truth and legend are immortalized in this one-hour documentary film. The film follows Holiday, also referred to as “Lady Day” or “Lady”, through the many triumphs and trials of her career, and does it’s very best to separate the facts from fiction. Her autobiography Lady Sings The Blues is used as a rough guide of how she desired her life story to be viewed by her public. Those who knew her, worked with her, and loved her paint a different picture than this popular, and mostly fictional autobiography.
Popular music places a premium on accessibility, represents various meanings to boost both instant appeal and memorability - distinctive tunes, novel instrumental flourishes, danceable rhythms, repeated riffs - but its signal feature is melodic emphasis and great vocal gatherings.
The brass plays an ascending sequence, followed by pizzicato notes played by the strings, and an ascending and descending scale on the harp. Strings and oboe play the rhythmic melody, whilst the trumpet plays fanfares in syncopation. The oboe is then replaced by the flute. There is an ascending scale played by the strings, then the brass section repeats the string and oboe melody with cymbal crashes at cadence points. The orchestra then plays a loud melody with cymbal crashes and drum rolls. There is an interrupted cadence, followed by crescendo with cymbal crashes and a brass ostinato. The piece ends with a perfect cadence.
... then plays allegro passages of semi quavers, accompanied by timpani and descending scales in the woodwind. The clarinet, takes over the main melody whilst the cello accompanies with sequences. The French horn takes over the melody, accompanied by the strings. The flute briefly plays the melody before the cello plays octaves, accompanying the woodwind as they play a reprise of the DSCH theme and the timpani crashes. Repeating the themes in the first movement, the cello plays the DSCH motif followed by the "tate ta, tate ta" rhythm in the strings. The horn then plays the theme in augmentation, whilst the cello plays passages of ascending and descending scales, and the theme is heard again in the strings. The movement builds up with the motif appearing increasingly often in the woodwind and strings and climaxes with octaves by the soloist and a boom from the timpani.