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Orchestral Analysis Essay

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00:00-00:11 Orchestral introduction. This is mostly homophonic, with a very short polyphonic twist between the violins at 00:04-00:09. 00:12-00:19 Altos start with “And the glory…” Although they are singing alone, the music is not monophonic since the orchestra has its own independent accompaniment. At 00:15, there is a full choir homophonic response with the same text (“And the glory…”). 00:19-00:44 Polyphonic setting of “shall be revealed” (tenors followed by basses followed by sopranos). At 00:24, the polyphony continues with all four voices, and with both parts of the text (“And the glory” and “shall be revealed”). At 00:37, the whole choir sings this entire first line of text homophonically to finish off this section of the chorus. 00:44-00:49 Orchestral interlude – …show more content…

02:24-02:37 Mainly homophonic, with a long held note on “for the mouth” in the sopranos, while the other parts move. At 02:30, something similar, with the altos holding the long note. 02:39-02:52 Following a pause, a grand homophonic conclusion, at a slightly slower tempo, on “hath spoken it”. A couple of points of interest: i) The text “shall see it together” is nearly always set homophonically, even if the prevalent texture in a particular section is polyphonic. The idea of using a homophonic texture to express “togetherness” is quite common. It is a musical pun of sorts. ii) This chorus is not big on melisma. The word “flesh” is nearly always set with three notes on the “e” vowel, but three notes barely qualifies as a melisma, certainly not when we have discussed 30 or 50 note examples! The other piece of text that sounds melismatic is “be revealed”, though it actually sounds more melismatic than it really is. The reason for this is that you have three “e” vowels in a row – “be revealed”. Because you might not hear the intervening consonants, “r” and “v”, these three “e” vowels end up sounding like one continuous “e”

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