Parody: Silent Film Clip w/organ accompaniment; with music theory annotations

YOU MUST DOUBLE CLICK THE CLIP THROUGH TO YOUTUBE TO SEE THE ANNOTATIONS.

If you ever wonder what you learn in college-level music theory, sight-singing and dictation classes, this pretty much sums it up except that this analyzes RECORDED music without the benefit of having written music to cheat with. This was strictly to test how they developed my "ear" in school. I would have to say I am satisfied.

ALL of the lingo in the captions was gobbledygook to me two years ago. I had no clue what any of it meant. I didn't know a root position from a tree root. Now I know that theory is a way of expressing in written form what is going on musically in a composition.

The video boils down 2 yrs of theory study to 3:03 so you might have to watch it a few times as more is going on than meets the eye.

A serendipitous series of events Inspired by Peter Schickele's parody commentary on Beethoven's 5th from P.D.Q. Bach and a courageous Australian rapper's video about being quarantined in an Australian hospital for the last 6 months with drug-resistant TB (see "Fully Sick Rapper's "Life in Quarantine") inspired me to do something similar. I wanted to see what I had learned and decided to do it by trying to put into words what goes on musically as scenes roll by on a movie clip. This clip has always intrigued me because the music so perfectly matches the scenes on screen.

Since silent movie organists often had no score to read, they had to reach into a "bag of tricks." I now (finally) understand that this consists of knowledge NOT of a huge repertoire of rote-memorized pieces, but of mastery of a bunch of "plug and play" intros, endings, themes, fills, tricks, bridges, turnarounds, modulations, cadences, and other parts that, creatively combined, can draw an audience into a story and, through the music, allow them to participate fully with the story unfolding on the screen.

A fellow youtuber sent me this clip of a silent film with pipe organ accompaniment. I analyzed it with an eye for edu-tainment and it proved to me that I have indeed learned the rudiments of music history and theory. What was fun for me was realizing that I now have a rudimentary understanding of the "who, what, when, where, why" of music.

I had no printed music, just the clip. I listened to it several times and jotted things down in an effort to gauge my learning.

I came to school with a rote-memorized repertoire of other people's creative works, but wanted to learn about harmony so that I could perhaps one day give voice to the songs that reside in my own soul.

This clip demonstrates the kind of harmonic knowledge that was ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE for any musician or composer from Bach to the invention of mass-produced printed music. That's why the history and literature classes are a must. It all ties together.

So this has turned into an enlightening "start somewhere" project. I hope to do more of these as time passes.




Enjoy!

Category:

Music

Tags:

• silent
• movie
• organ
• theatre
• theater
• accompaniment
• clip
• music
• theory
• AP
• basic
• circle
• of
• fifths
• 5ths
• dominant
• tonic
• PDQ
• P.D.Q.
• Bach
• Peter
• Schikele
• parody
• math
• link
• mathematics
• mozart
• effect
• computational
• aesthetics
• fully
• sick
• rapper
• life
• in
• quarantine
• wurlitzer
• barton
• steinway

[silentfilm2]

Good for you for analyzing this and posting it! It's always fascinating to see how people react to music for silent films...please check out some of the improvisations I've done...my channel is silentfilm2. You can also hear my score for KING OF KINGS with a search, it's on here in many little parts. It's the version that has a color sequence at the beginning with a chorus singing Ooh.... I'll be interested in your comments. Best wishes Donald Sosin

[IUSB99]

@silentfilm2 thank you! You'll have to send me a link to the king of kings clips. I could not find them.

[dieselheart001]

Thanks for bringing this to YouTube! This has always ranked at the top of my favorite

musical moments in silents.

[GlennMagusHarvey]

Haha, thanks for telling me about this video. It's nice!

[silentfilm2]

@IUSB99 hi...here's the link to part 1, the others follow... Happy Holidays.

youtube.com/watch?v=oMwZEsJagj­0