Music Critique

6 Pages 1528 Words

The first piece I heard was called “Sati” which literally means: mindfulness, attention, recall, wisdom, to reference to speed agility. It was written by Dana Wilson in 1983 and was performed by four instrumentalists. This was a twentieth century piece. There were three membranophones, one aerophone, two chordophones, and seven idiophones. The membranophones were the bass drum, tom toms, and congas. The aerophone was the alto saxophone which carried the melody throughout most of the piece. The chordophones were the electric cello, and the upright piano which was only used once for one or two phrases. The idiophones were the bells, two marimbas, a crash cymbal, a china symbol, a gong, and chimes. The timbre of the piece was very eerie and suspenseful. “Sati” was written in additive meter. Throughout the piece there were many crescendos and decrescendos ranging from pp to fff. There were many tempo changes as well with ranged from the original tempo of largo to the climactic presto tempo and back to the largo tempo in the end of the piece.
The alto saxophone starts off, very high in its register, and the cello and percussion then follow with accompaniment. Once in the piece the cello gets the melody, then the cello and saxophone play a homophonic melody together. When this concludes, there is a keyboard percussion solo. Following the solo, the saxophone comes back in with the melody. The piece concludes itself with a decrescendo into a single sustained monophonic note.
The next piece was from the piece entitled “Partita,” written by William H. Bates in 1943. Mr. Bates himself was playing the piece unaccompanied. “Partita” was originally composed of seven pieces, but only five of them were played. The pipe organ, aerophone, was the only instrument used.
The first movement was hard to describe only that there was little dynamic change with only one part with a distinguishable crescendo and decrescendo...