Listening Journal Week 3

This week's listening offered a good contrast of the ups and downs of blues and swing music.

W. C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues" is an interesting mix of blues and Tin Pan Alley.  The form adds an unexpected C section at the end after the AABA form of the refrain.  The typical blues harmony exists, but a new melody appears.  Bessie Smith's performance adds additional "blues" notes to Handy's composition, bringing a larger element of emotion and expression to the performance.

Fletcher Henderson's "Wrappin' It Up" is a good example of swing music techniques, including a "walking" bass (where the bass plays on every beat) and the bass drum playing all beats as well.  The piece has a good forward motion, with a saxophone and trumpet solo.  I find the moving bass line to be a strong contributing factor to the feeling of movement in the piece.  It never gives the listener time to "settle" on one musical event.  We're always moving on to something else.  I found the tutti chromatic movement immediately before the trumpet solo to be incredibly interesting, well written, and well played.

I found "Taking a Chance on Love" to be a charming piece of music.  The form, after the introduction, was pretty straight forward, with a standard AABA section taking center stage with the singer.  The same form returns after an instrumental break, this time with multiple instruments taking the lead.  Although this tempo is slower that "Wrappin' It Up," I still feel as though the walking bass line gives the music a sense of forward momentum throughout. 

Glenn Miller's arrangement of "In the Mood" is probably one of the most well known songs of the Swing Era, perhaps in American music history.   The form is sort of an extended ABA (with repeats) and has a very famous extended ending with a repeated rising pattern in the horns.  I found the reading in the text on this piece to be very interesting, in terms of his familiarity.  We are so far removed from World War II that understanding the kind of comfort this piece could have brought is lost on us.  It was a very profound piece of writing and analysis.

I wish I had not read about the Mills Brothers' performance of "Paper Doll" prior to listening.  When the men break into 3 part harmony prior to the refrain, it was absolutely delightful.  Their attention to blend and balance was very nice and, as a singer myself, I appreciated their attention to unification of vowel sounds and intonation.  The piece starts off with the refrain, sung (seemingly) slowly.  To a first time listener, this would not appear that this is the refrain.  When it returns with the double time feel, it is strangely familiar.  I did not believe it when I read that the words from the first refrain and second are actually moving at the same speed.  It's truly amazing how much of a difference a change in the bass line and/or percussion to make to a melody.

I enjoyed this module's listening very much and am looking forward to Module 4.