The song course

 What do I need to do to get ready for this new song course?

First I should write this blog post. This post will show how much work I've done already, even though I feel I'm at the very beginning of the planning process. One thing I did was to make the poster.   

See how many students are enrolled (18!). Some have studied with me in the past.  

Subscribe to Spotify premium.  Create a playlist for the course (empty so far!). I want to make sure the playlist is not too intimidating. Figure out how to search for profiles.  

Check academic calendar:  classes begin Jan. 21. End, May 8.  (Spring break week of March 17.)

Think about guest speakers?  

The overall shape of the course is in my mind, but vaguely.  

Think about musical survey for students:

                      Do you play / sing / read music? (Instruments).  

                       Favorite genres, composers, songwriters, performers. 

                        What else should I ask them?  Open ended question.  

I should create a folder on my desktop of laptop to include everything in the course.  (Done!)  

Found a document I had started a month ago, called "song course plan."

 Background

 

Antecedents:  

French Song  

Folk music movements. 

 

Falla [classical lieder] 

 

Theoretical

Layers of interpretation

Adaptation studies 

Elements of music 

Prosody!  

 

Rubrics

 

             How to listen to a song.  

Rúbrica para escuchar una “canción de autor”

 

La canción es “the sole example of one preexisting art form being imposed upon another. The words of the poem are not adapted, like film scenarios from plays; they remain unaltered while being tampered with” (Ned Rorem, Settling the Score 293). [Not entirely true… you could make a comic book of a poem and keep all the words of the original poem, or use a piece of music as a score for a ballet, without changing anything]. 

 

I. El texto original. ¿De quién es? Analizar el texto como poema. 

 

El poeta / la poeta: resonancia cultural del texto 

Ritmo y versificación / elementos musicales implícitos / explícitos en el texto

 

II. La música. 

 

Estilo y género. Época. Instrumentación. Elementos musicales (rítmicos, melódicos…). Características afectivas (emociones). 

 

III. La relación entre texto y música. 

 

La canción es una interpretación del poema, es decir: nos lleva a percibir el mensaje del poema de un modo determinado. ¿Cuáles son las preguntas que tenemos que formular para juzgar esta interpretación?  

 

1. Emociones de la melodía / instrumentación / ritmo 

 

2. Preeminencia [relativa] de la música y la letra 

 

3. Comparación con otras canciones con letras del mismo poeta. Conexiones reales con el autor original  

 

4. El énfasis en ciertos versos…  

 

5. El contexto de la recepción. El público. 

 

6. Reacciones personales… [me gusta porque /no me gusta porque ]

 

*7. El propósito de la canción. [canción de amor / canción política / homenaje al poeta] 

 

Poets

 

Góngora

Rosalía de Castro

Machado

Lorca

Hernandez

Goytisolo

Valente?

[Neruda?] 

 

Singer-songwriters 

G. Montero

Serrat

Prada

Ibáñez

 

Flamenco 

Camarón

Linares  

Morente

Poveda

Rosalía

 

Projects

 

Songs

Critical essays

Visual projects for those who don't like to write about music.  

Podcast / playlist 

***

What are the basic elements of creating a song from a text? Probably I would say things like this:

An accented syllable will fall on a strong beat in the music (typically).  The song I am listening to at this exact moment has this line:  "I can ONly give you COUNtry walks in SPRINGtime." The capitalized syllables all fall on beat 1.  I bet you can see where the 3 is?  What happens when the metrical accent is displaced?  

This is an obvious example of something everyone knows already even if they don't know they know it. 

What else? Musical phrases are equivalent to lines or stanzas of poetry. There is a general alignment principle.