Romantic - Instruments

Resources - Aural

• Voices and instruments used
• Timre - nature of the sound produced
• Ranges of parts  (eg. Low sounds create melancholy effects, How does this contribute to the overall sound effect?)

World music - distinguish between:

1. plucked instruments
2. metallic instruments 
3. non-metallic instruments 
4. differences of timbre arising from different types of muting 

Western Traditional music 

1. effects of changes - Plucking and Bowing
2. use of mutes
3. harmonics
4. different bowing techniques - e.g. sul ponticello, sul tasto, or sul la touche 

Texture - Aural

• Monophonic - a single unaccompanied melody 
• Polyphony - independently moving melody lines (another way of saying 'contrapuntal' for Renaissance music)
• Contrapuntal - independently moving lines 

1. Free, no melodic similarity between parts
2. Imitative, another part enters with the same theme while the first continues its own theme
3. Canonic, a strict form of imitation, second part is near enough to copy the first, even at a different pitch
4. Fugal, as in a fugue or fugato 

• Homophony - Chordal textures, some times also described as homorhythmic - ALL parts moving at roughly the same rhythm

1. Melody-dominated homophony - textures in which the melody is supported by a rhythmically independent part, for example Alberti bass or broken chord patterns 

• Heterophony - Melody line is heard along with rhythmically different, or melodically varied version of itself.
• Antiphony - passages of music are performed by different singers/and or instruments in alternation. "Call and response"

• Octaves - don't forget to say how many there are and differentiate between octaves and unison
• Pedal Points - harmonic and tonal devices (make up the texture as well!)
• Ostinato - short repeated melodic or rhythmic figure, heard in conjunction with other musical ideas 
• Riff - a term for ostinato CONNECTION to jazz and popular music 

Tonality - Aural

• Is the music tonal or atonal ?
• If the music is tonal, is it functional (do cadences define the key?)
• Is it non-functional? Perhaps it still has a key signature, but it is best regarded as being 'on' rather than 'in' the key 
• Modal - in which case, name the key and mode it is based on. (Be careful, the music may not be modal throughout, or else may change modes as it goes on!)
• Pentatonic elements (In popular music - in these cases, name the key as well, for example, E pentatonic major
• Does the music modulate? (change key systematically), as in most classical works OR does it abruptly 'shift' from one tonal centre to another?

Melody - Aural

• The range of the part
• Whether the melody is in a major or minor key, or else in a mode or atonal 
• Whether it is diatonic or chromatic
• The phrase structure - whether it is balanced phrases ('periodic phrasing') or something less regular
• Use of repetition or sequence 
• Whether the melody is monotone (staying on a single note), conjunct (moving by step) or disjunct (moving by leap); if moving by leap, be ready to describe intervals
• Particularly stylistic characteristics, for example in early music the tendency to follow a leap with a note between the two  (John Dowland's Flow my Tears - Renaissance) 
• Use of motifs
• Whether the melody line is flowing or broken up by rests

If describing vocal music, can comment on the Text setting

• Syllabic (one note to a syllable) 
• Melismatic (several notes to a syllable)
• Whether verbal and musical accents coincide (do stressed syllables fall on the first beat, or other strong beats, of the bar or not?

Rhythm and Metre - Aural

• The variety of note lenths
• Recurring rhythmic patterns 
• Dotted rhythms or the 'reversed' dotted rhythm describes as either a scotch snap or Lombardic rhythm
• Syncopation
• Hemiola
• Triplets or other 'tuplets 
• Time signature - whether it is simple or compound, duple, triple, quadruple, or quintuple
• Metre changes
• Whether there is metre at all

Harmony - Aural

• Primary or secondary 
• Augmented or diminished
• In root position or one of the inversions
• Diatonic or chromatic
• Functional (strongly cadential harmony) or whether unrelated chords are used.

Harmonic Devices

• Cadences  (Perfect, imperfect/ phrygian, plagal, interrupted)
• Tonic or dominant pedals (specify which)
• Circle of fifths 
• Tierce de picardie 

Dissonance 

• Suspension
• False relation
• Appogiatura 
• Seventh chords, or one of the higher dissonances (9th, 11th, 13th) - and also whether they resolved
• Added 6th, augmented 6th, diminished 7th, Neapolitan 6th 
• Added-note harmony