Matthew Rosenthal Music History & Score Analysis 1/31/14

I)

Today I heard music from a wide range of styles and genres. I always

wake up to a song by my favorite band, Periphery (my iPhones alarm clock is programmed to wake me up to a different song by them each day). Todays song was All New Materials, an experimental, prog-metal song that uses a lot of changing time signatures and key modulations. Periphery has had a big following in the metal community for the past two years, and All New Materials being one of their first songs, it was pretty important to their development and establishment as a recognizable group in popular music. Over the next hour, I heard my cell phone go off numerous times. I was trying to reschedule some of my students lessons and many callbacks were made in the process. Cell phone ringtones are extremely important in our society today, as many of us rely on cellular communications to make plans. On my days off from school, like today, I usually love to listen to WQXR, the classical music station on FM radio. At about 12:10, they played Franz Schuberts Piano Quintet in A, The Trout. Schubert was one of the more prolific ClassicalRomantic composers in the late 1700s and early 1800s. This and many others of Schuberts pieces are extremely important to Classical-Romantic piano/art song/ensemble literature. The original function of this piece was to be an ensemble piece, containing four stringed instruments and a piano, and that function has

remained to this day. I also heard a portion of the Overture to King Lear, by Mily Balakirev, who was a Nationalist Romantic composer. I only heard the first three minutes of the piece, but it seemed to have the characteristics of many late romantic works: big dynamic and feel contrasts, and well as some dissonant and chromatic harmonies. Berlioz originally wrote the overture. Later on in the day, I was listening to some music by The Beatles with my mom; we particularly like the song And I Love Her, as it was the song my sister walked down to on her wedding day! We listened to that song today, as well as Yellow Submarine and When Im SixtyFour. The Beatles are still an extremely influential group in pop and rock genres of music, and their music is played and enjoyed by millions of people, old and young, to this day. II) The music I heard today all has a particular value in society,

depending on niches to which these genres are most played. I like to be diverse in the types of music I listen to, but for people who only listen to Rock and Roll, maybe Schubert would not be their cup of tea. Because of the easy accessibility to write and record music in our generation, songs by The Beatles, Periphery, and even Schubert could be easily found by historians three hundred years from now. With modern technology, it would be possible to arrange every piece and song that was recorded, and on a massive hard drive, organize the music by genre, style, date, and composer. To me, all the music I heard today was equally valuable to me (except for my cell phones ringtone). Playing and listening to music is my passion, so its really hard to single out certain types of music as better or more valuable to me than others.