7/29/2019 Short Essay from Sister Ray

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Masterpieces of Western Music

Spring 2013

Short Essay 1

Due Monday, February 4

Assignment:

After reading chapter 3 of the textbook, write a brief essay comparing and contrasting the two tunes

below. A link to a recording of each tune is included. Feel free write about characteristics of these

recordings when discussing the tunes. You can also write about the lyrics attached to each tune, if you

like.

This essay should be written for a knowledgeable musician, rather than a layperson, so any of the

technical terms from the readings can be used freely. Your essay should be about 100-150 words long.

Tunes:When the Saints Go Marching In,sung by Louie Armstrong

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,sung by Etta James

http://youtu.be/wyLjbMBpGDA?t=1m7shttp://youtu.be/wyLjbMBpGDA?t=1m7shttp://youtu.be/wyLjbMBpGDA?t=1m7shttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Thz1zDAytzUhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Thz1zDAytzUhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Thz1zDAytzUhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Thz1zDAytzUhttp://youtu.be/wyLjbMBpGDA?t=1m7s

7/29/2019 Short Essay from Sister Ray

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Prose Samples:

Below is a sample of especially fine writing. Before composing your essay, I would suggest reading the

example a couple times.

Dmitri Tymoczko, from his article The Music Ideas of Milton Babbitt and John Cage:

Milton Babbitt and John Cage, two of the most notorious postwar American composers,

are often thought to be antipodal figures. Babbitt is straight, Jewish, politically

conservative, and southern, a skeptical rationalist who talks like a mathematician on

speed. Cagewho died in 1992was gay, goyish, politically left, and Californian, a genial

fruitcake whose enthusiasms ran toward astrology, mushrooms, Zen, and anarchist

politics. Babbitts music is fastidiously organized, each of his notes carefully placed

within multiple nested rhythmic and melodic patterns. Cages music, by contrast, is

scrupulously disorganized, composed randomlyfor instance by tossing coins or tracing

astronomical maps onto music paper. Not surprisingly, Babbitt is an academic, and has

many students who teach at music departments throughout the country. Cage, who

never graduated from college, was an auto-didact (more or less), and has had at least as

much influence on visual arts and popular music as on the world of academic musical

composition.

Yet behind these differences there lurks a fascinating, and more fundamental similarity.

Leave aside the fact that even expert listeners sometimes have difficulty distinguishing

Babbitts sophisticated musical puzzles from Cages mystical soundscapes. The

important point is that Babbitt and Cage straddle the line between philosophy and art.

Beginning with specific philosophical ideas, each developed an utterly original style of

musical composition that reflects those ideas almost perfectlyand in the process

thwarts almost every conventional musical value. This poses a real problem for music

criticism. For beyond talking about how this music sounds, it is natural to want to talk

about why it sounds the way that it does. (And, indeed, about what role ideas should

play in our appreciation of music.) This means that the critic of Babbitt and Cages music

needs to be a critic of their philosophieswhich is to say, a philosopher himself.