well for most of the higher grades you have to recongise which musical period the piece they play comes from

ive got it wrong every time

help i just dont understand it!

If it sounds detached, no crescendoes or diminuendoes, just loud or soft, with ornaments,trills etc, +/- if you can hear that it is contrapuntal then I say it's baroque.
Homophonic - melody with chordal accompaniment or Alberti bass is classical
Romanticism is songlike melodies with denser texture & richer harmonies, dramatic contrasts, wide range of pitch & dynamics.
Modern is just odd isn't it - dissonance, chromaticism, unusual rhythms.
BTW when I did my exam in the sight singing when he said to look at it I think I hummed abit of it out loud - did that matter do you think? Was I suppose only to do it in my head. I know I sang it OK when he played it - can't bear to think that I might have lost marks for humming it to myself first.

no, my examier said i was allowed to try it out if i wanted. i didnt! i couldnt do it, it was too hard. mine was in Eb with an 8ver leap at the end. was yours?

No it started on D did a fifth to A & came down the minor scale . It was adagio & not at all scary. (Iknew I wouldn't be able to do something allegro & all in quavers). The only disconcerting thing was him playing the wrong chord & starting note. I thought it sounded too high & said so & he said oh I've played the wrong one. My nerves were completely shredded by then.

lol. mine was quite fast, lots of quavers and jumps. i got nothing right

Well I haven't been taught musical periods, so when in my exam, I got asked Musicianship questions and she was asking me features of Baroque music, I couldn't give her many! ARGH!

i know all that but when i hear the piece i just dont know and cant tell

Listen, then listen some more! Then a bit more too. For all its faults, Classic FM broadcasts short excerpts, giving quite a range of different periods to listen to in a relatively short period of time.

If you're well into A Level music at present, plus having several exams under your belt, you must have some idea whether a piece is by Bach or Bernstein. Try to relate what you hear to the pieces you know.

QUOTE (Amadeus @ Mar 6 2005, 09:32 AM)

Not a very indepth explanation as we are going out soon and run out of time here on the forums.It`s Mother`s Day.

In depth explanations are inappropriate for an essentially shallow division. If you add Renaissance and Mediaeval (which are very different from Baroque) that still makes some of the categories enormous, with a wide variety of styles within them.

Listen to Classic Fm all the time - and jot down what you can hear - then go on the web-site and check who the composer was - and see if his/her dates fit into one of the broad categories.

Or why not blitz a period - listen to nothing but Baroque for a month (borrow CDs from friends, teachers, local library). Then listen to Classical, then Romantic, then Modern. Give yourself a checklist of things to listen for (texture, tonality, rhythm, etc...)

I think its one of those things where practise, practise, practise makes perfect!

Don't know if this helps, but I've ordered my CD collection chronologically by date of birth, so that when I fancy a bit of Dvorak, I have to know when he was born to find him quickly. I did this a few years ago, and I'm much better now on remembering who was when.

QUOTE (Petite Joueuse @ Mar 6 2005, 10:15 PM)

Don't know if this helps, but I've ordered my CD collection chronologically by date of birth, so that when I fancy a bit of Dvorak, I have to know when he was born to find him quickly. I did this a few years ago, and I'm much better now on remembering who was when.

that's a sensible idea... when I have my storage sorted I may have to try that.

Nat, put the Einaudi away for a while and listen to lots of classical music!

Spend a few days listening to Bach, Vivaldi and Handel (Baroque).

Then spend a few days listening to Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn (Classical).

Then spend a few days listening to Schubert, Mendelssohn and Rachmaninov (Romantic).

Then spend a few days listening to Schoenberg, Shostakovitch and Debussy (Modern)

Get totally into the mood of each; listen to distinguishing features; notice how each is different from the others.

There's no need to go and buy anything - you can download and listen to free samples on the internet.

Just do it!

Violinia

QUOTE (Violinia @ Mar 7 2005, 10:54 AM)

Then spend a few days listening to Schoenberg, Shostakovitch and Debussy (Modern)

I know the Board doesn't allow you to call them anything else, but it does strike me that "Modern" is a strange description for music that was written 110 years ago ("L'Apres-midi d'un faune"). It's clearly very different from Mendelssohn and Schumann, but even more so from Stockhausen.

How should one describe Schoenberg's "Verklaerte Nacht", which is (only ) 105 years old? I think of it as late Romantic.

QUOTE (Violinia @ Mar 7 2005, 10:54 AM)

Nat, put the Einaudi away for a while and listen to lots of classical music!

i cannot believe you have even suggested that!!

QUOTE

I know the Board doesn't allow you to call them anything else, but it does strike me that "Modern" is a strange description for music that was written 110 years ago ("L'Apres-midi d'un faune"). It's clearly very different from Mendelssohn and Schumann, but even more so from Stockhausen

Well yes you're right of course. There probably needs to be a change of name for "modern" - like early 20th Cent; then you could have "late 20th Cent".

Another thing - the boundaries are a bit fuzzy at times, after all it's not as if the composers were really aware of these periods as they were composing - styles, fashions, influences, whatever - changed gradually as they still do today. They're just a guide really.

Violinia

QUOTE

styles, fashions, influences, whatever - changed gradually as they still do today. They're just a guide really.

True.. but in the exam situation I think they will generally play in 'typical' styles for the designated periods.