Av Maria Gcse

Western tradition: (Josquin des Perez “Ave Maria” and Bach “Allegro”)
Music during this period by the composer’s songs I listened to was very pleasant to listen to. It is a high renaissance style of polyphonic vocal music. The motet "Ave Maria” is a great example of the style during this time frame. This song had a great opening and subsequent structural interplay. The opening section summarizes the first four lines of text in a simple structure. Clear imitation of each phrase echoes from the highest to lowest voice, almost resembling a Gregorian chant. The phrases appeared to be identical in length, the counterpoint's turbidity increases, climaxing where all four voices were singing together. This climax turns to an imperfect, deceptive

cadence, symbolizing the permeative difficulty of Mother Mary's influence.
Local details in texture and counterpoint often directly relate to the syntactic effect of the text, like the sudden expanse of homophonic harmonies. The vocalists join in climbing melodic lines and dense syncopation of rhythms in an attempt to evoke Mary's filling of heaven and earth.
While the regularity of imitation initially articulates the phrases, the middle verses exemplify the articulation from contrasts in texture.

Duets alternate between voices and often break off into trios. The lines are punctuated by structural cadences, presenting the text in a temporary repose. These songs seem to increase in power, placing the strongest, most perfect cadence for the very end of each line. For the “Ave Maria”, the unity of musical sound, representing the spiritual unity of prayer, completes the act of worship which has been the rhetorical goal of the text. The final lines are sung in homophony, as if the four, once separate voices have aligned under the grace of

God.

World tradition: Huun Huur Tu “Kh mei” and The Tibetian Budhist Monk Chant “Lama Tashi)

I found this music to be unpleasant but interesting and thought provoking as I listened to the music. The most distinctive characteristic of the songs that I choose appeared to be throat signing, in which the singers sing both the note (drone) and the drone's overtone(s), which produced two or three notes simultaneously. The overtones sounded like a flute or a whistle but was solely a product of someone’s voice.
The throat singing produced one or more pitches sound simultaneously over a fundamental pitch, resulting in a very unique sound.

The popularity of throat singing among Tuvans seems to have arisen as a result of geographic location and culture. The open landscape of Tuva allows for the sounds to carry a great distance. Ethnomusicologists studying throat singing in these areas mark khoomei as an integral part in the ancient pastoral animism that is still practiced today. Throat singers will travel far into the countryside looking for the right river, or will go up to the steppes of the mountainside to create the proper environment for throat-singing.
The animistic world view of this region identifies the spirituality of objects in nature, not just in their shape or location, but in their sound as well. The cultures in this part of Asia have developed many instruments and techniques to mimic the sounds of animals, wind, and water while the cultures of this region share throat singing, their styles vary in breadth of

development.
Even with the Mon chants that I listened to, it was simply harmonized sounds that they are able to produce from deep within their throats. The chants were rhythmic speaking and singing of words that were primarily one or two main pitches. Chants ranged from a simple melody involving a limited set of notes to highly complex musical structures, which included a great deal of repetition of the sub phrases. Chant may be considered speech, music, or a heightened or stylized form of speech. In the later Middle Ages some religious chants evolved into song which formed one of the roots of later Western music.