HANDOUT 1 MUS115 music, art & ideas
What is a line in Art?
Line
– a series of points; an area whose length is considerably greater than its
width; an indication of direction, an apparent movement. A line is a point moved or moving through
space. This applies to drawing,
painting, printmaking, sculpture, clay/pottery, and architecture.
Characteristics of
lines: lines can be actual or implied; a line which denotes or
describes an outside edge of an object is a contour line. A contour line divides the plane or
delineates an edge of a volume.
Horizontal – often
read as across, quiet, stable.
Vertical: reaching up, spiritual, uplifting, rising. Diagonal: dynamic, moving.
Lines can be
interpreted as having expressive qualities; particular qualities – thick or
thin, weighty or straight, hard-edged or soft – can indicate moods or feelings.
Composition – an arrangement of elements of art or music into a unified whole
(unified by the intent of the artist in traditional views; unified by the perception of it as a work of art by the perceiver according to contemporary critical theory)
REPETITION – in music, Small-scale
repetition creates a sense of pulse, rhythm and meter; motific repetition is
used to build phrases; Intermediate-scale
repetition creates patterns and ostinati; Large-scale repetition creates FORM,
which is often experienced as “statement, departure,
return” at multiple levels.
In the visual arts, repetition creates visual rhythm. Repetition is often not exact; this gives a
sense of . . .
VARIATION – [A long] poem . .
. satisfies another two-fold requirement, one that is closely related to the
rule of variety within unity:
repetition and surprise.
Repetition is a cardinal principal in poetry. Meter and its accents, rhyme, the epithets in Homer and other
poets, phrases and incidents that recur like musical motifs and serve as signs
to emphasize continuity. At the other
extreme are breaks, changes, inventions - in a word, the unexpected. What we call development is merely the
alliance between repetition and surprise, recurrence and invention, continuity
and interruption. Octavio
Paz, “Telling and Singing” in The Other Voice
CONTRAST – the
use of opposing, opposite or markedly different elements, such as colors or
lines, to produce an effect
BALANCE – symmetry/asymmetry
PROPORTION - the
relationships of the relative sizes of elements within an image, or relative
durations in a musical work
EMPHASIS – how is the stress, accent or emphasis created?
ECONOMY - limitation
of a composition to a few essential elements; usually a voluntary constraint
that is part of the creative process.
SCALE - the size of
a work compared to the environment: miniature, human, life-size,
monumental. The term can also apply to
musical works, although it has an entirely different meaning than “musical
scale.” (“A symphony is a large-scale musical work when compared to a song.”)
Elements of Music
Pitch –
register (high or low); Organization of
pitches with a pattern of intervals between them creates scales; simultaneous sounding of pitches produces chords,
and patterns of chords form harmony.
Tonal systems of harmony produce a sense of key. Words we might use to describe harmony:
major/minor, dissonant, consonant, tonal, atonal, triadic, functional. Words we might use to describe scales:
major/minor, chromatic, gapped, pentatonic.
Rhythm – the
time element of music. A specific
rhythm is a specific pattern in time; we usually hear these in relation to a
steady pulse, and mentally organize this pulse or tempo into meter
(sometimes called a "time signature"). Meter organizes beats into groups, usually of two or three; beats
can be divided into small units usually 2, 3 or 4 subdivisions
Melody, or
musical line, is a combination of pitch and rhythm (some say
"duration"). Sometimes a
melody is considered to be the theme of a composition. We might
characterize melody by its contour (rising or falling) and the size of
the intervals in it. A melody that uses
mostly small intervals (or scale steps) and is smooth is said to be a conjunct
melody. Not surprisingly, a melody
that uses large intervals is called a disjunct melody. A motif (or motive) is either a very
short melody or a distinctive part of a longer melody. I might describe the opening four notes of
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as a "motific cell." Melodies are articulated in different ways;
smooth and connected versus choppy and separated are types of articulation.
Timbre – sound
quality or tone color; timbre is the characteristic that allows us to
distinguish between one instrument and another, and the difference between
vowel sounds (for example, long "a" or "ee"). Terms we might use to describe timbre: bright, dark, brassy, reedy, harsh, noisy,
thin, buzzy, pure, raspy, shrill, mellow, strained. I prefer to avoid describing timbre in emotional terms (excited,
angry, happy, sad, etc.); that is not the sound quality, it is its effect or
interpretation. Rather than describe
the timbre of an instrument in other terms, it is often more clear just to
describe the timbre by naming the instrument, once we have learned the names
and sounds of a few instruments.
Dynamics – loud or
soft. A composition that has extremely
soft passages as well as extremely loud passages is said to have a large or
wide dynamic range. Dynamics can
change suddenly or gradually (crescendo, getting louder, or decrescendo,
getting softer.)
Texture –
monophonic (one voice or line),
polyphonic (many
voices, usually similar, as in Renaissance or Baroque counterpoint),
homophonic
(1. a melody with simple accompaniment;
2. chords moving in the same
rhythm (homorhythmic))
heterophony
– “mixed” or multiple similar versions of a melody performed simultaneously
(rare in European music; possibly used in Ancient Greece)
collage –
juxtaposition & superimposition of extremely different textures or sounds
DC Meckler
January 2008