Music is organized sound that can be replicated through imitation or notation. Music is distinct from noise in that sounds of a door creaking open or fingernails on a black board are irregular and disorganized. The sound waves that map these noises are complex and cannot be heard as identifiable pitches.

Some of the basic ways that we analyze musical sounds are:

PITCH: How high or low a sound is to the ear. Pitch is measured technically by the frequency of a sound wave or how often waves repeat themselves. In western music there are twelve unique pitches (C, C-sharp or D-flat, D, D-sharp or E-Flat, E, F, F-sharp or G-flat, G, G-sharp or A-flat, A, A-sharp or B-flat and B). The pitches followed by sharps or flats are called accidentals and they are most easily described as the black keys on a piano keyboard. They are located musically, one half step between two pitches on either side of them. For example, D-sharp and E-flat have the same pitch. When referring to pitches in the context of notated, or written music, they are called notes.

SCALE: A stepwise arrangement of pitches (for example C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C) that often serves as the basis for a melody. A piece, or a portion of a piece, will often use only notes found in a particular scale. Western music primarily uses the major scale or the minor scale, in one form or another. To most people, the major scale, because of it’s particular arrangement of pitches, has the quality of sounding “bright”, “Happy” or “positive”. A minor scale, likewise, is usually described as “dark”, “sad” or “negative”.

Key: An arrangement or system of pitches, usually based on one of the major or minor scales, that is meant to serve as a reference point and a guiding force of a melody. The tonic of a key is often the starting and ending point for a piece written in a particular key — so if a piece is in E major, then the pitch  E will serve as the piece’s tonal center.

ADDITIONAL FACTS

1. All of the basic elements can be notated on the staff, which is a repeating set of five parallel horizontal lines. Often it is divided into measures to indicate metric divisions in the piece and marked at the beginning of each staff of the page with a clef to indicate reference points for identifying pitches.
2. When a piece strays from it’s basic key, this is called modulation. Keys are indicated in written music by a key signature at the beginning of each staff.
3. There are hundreds of scales used in the world’s many different musical cultures. In India, music played on the sitar and other instruments chooses pitches from a collection of twenty-two possibilities, with the distances between scale steps sometimes larges and sometimes smaller then those used in Western music. This can make a differences between pitches extremely subtle demands a virtuosity from Classical musicians.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (May 7, 1840 – November 6, 1893) wrote several of the most popular ballets in music history, including Swan Lake (1877), The Sleeping Beauty (1890) and his Christmas Classic, The Nutcracker (1892). In Addition to his dance works, Tchaikovsky composed dozens of orchestral works including seven symphonies.

Tchaikovsky was born in the small Russian town of Votkinsk and began studying Piano at the age of five. At first, his parents did not encourage his musical pursuits, believing that a “passionate” hobby would be dangerous for an already frail and sickly child. Eventually, however, Tchaikovsky moved to the Russian capital of St. Petersburg, where he completed his musical education. Czar Alexander III (1845 – 1894) was an admirer of his work. Another patron, Nadezhda von Meck (1831 – 1894), granted him a yearly stipend that allowed him to continue his musical endevors.

In addition to his ballets, Tchaikovsky is best known for his bombastic 1812 Overture (1880), which commemorated the Russian victory over the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 – 1821)and includes cannon fire and church bells as part of the instrumentation. Tchaikovsky also wrote eleven (11) Operas. The most famous are Eugene Onegin (1879) and The Queen of Spades (1890), both based on dramatic poems by the nineteenth century Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin (1799 – 1837).

Tchaikovsky became popular around the world during his career and toured the United States in 1891, introducing Americans to his now classic compositions. Two of his works — The 1812 Overture and The Nutcracker — have become sentimental favorites in American Culture and are often performed on the Fourth of July and at Christmastime, respectively.

Swan Lake

ADDITIONAL FACTS

1. Tchaikovsky’s last work was his Symphony no. 6, entitled Pathetique (1893). The composer died nine days after premiering the work, which was played as a requiem at his memorial.
2. Though there was once speculation that Tchaikovsky commited suicide after being exposed in a homosexual affair, most scholars today believe that he died of cholera.
3. Though Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin is considered a masterpiece, the Russian author Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) dismissed it as “silly” and “slapdash” saying that everything in it “insults Pushkin’s masterpiece.”