Amy Beach's A Hermit Thrush At Morn

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The delicate descriptions and words of A Hermit Thrush at Morn appealed to me as the words alone brought strong imagery to my head and tying that in with the music, I could feel the air on that summer day. The sweet imagery of John Clare’s poem is expressed in the musical elements of Amy Beach’s A Hermit Thrush at Morn. The hawthorn bush the mama thrush lives in is very protective and growing, just like her family. The mama thrush sings a cheery and high pitched song every day, and she was unaware of the human there observing her build her home (contributing to some of the more suspenseful chords). The music starts out very quiet, almost like waking up early, and builds pretty quickly just as the thrush begins her day. The twinkling …show more content…

Within the phrase structure, I could feel the pulse in beats of two beats per measure and the new phrases being recognized with a new melody. I could also feel a little bit of syncopation and polyrhythm at times when the treble clef was moving quickly with the base moving at a consistent tempo. There was ostinato at the beginning, middle, end which kind of relates to the phases of life. The texture I would describe as heterophony because of the simultaneous elaboration of the same melody. Looking at the musical score, each page has a different melody than the previous or next page. The shape of piece is uplifting and hopeful as the notes lie conjunct to each other along with having small intervals. The articulation is kind of staccato at the beginning then the notes all begin to mold together as the picture is painted. The music is very harmonious with a lot of consonance and a bit of dissonance so you can picture the busyness of the thrush. The cadence toward the end is the same staccato notes as the beginning, but got really soft and quiet really fast. The composer used very pure notes and mostly major chords. The dynamics start out soft in the beginning but the sound grows and falls as events happen. The music helps us picture the thrush singing her song with the piano notes are staccato, the tension in

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