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Contents The Treble clef .......................................................................................................................... 3

Letter names of the treble clef ............................................................................................... 3

The Bass Clef ........................................................................................................................... 3

Letter names of the notes in the Bass clef ............................................................................ 3

The Stave ................................................................................................................................. 4

Note values ............................................................................................................................... 4

Families of Instruments ............................................................................................................. 5

Woodwind ............................................................................................................................. 5

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Strings ................................................................................................................................... 5

Brass ..................................................................................................................................... 6

Percussion ............................................................................................................................ 6

Musical elements ...................................................................................................................... 7

Pitch ...................................................................................................................................... 7

Dynamics .............................................................................................................................. 7

Tempo ................................................................................................................................... 7

Time signatures (Metre) ........................................................................................................ 7

The keyboard ........................................................................................................................ 8

Unison ................................................................................................................................... 8

Lyrics ..................................................................................................................................... 8

Folk songs ............................................................................................................................. 8

Round singing (Canon) ......................................................................................................... 9

Repetition .............................................................................................................................. 9

Texture in music .................................................................................................................... 9

Part-song (SATB) ................................................................................................................ 10

Choral music terms ............................................................................................................. 11

The National Anthem of South Africa ...................................................................................... 11

EDVARD GRIEG .................................................................................................................... 12

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN .................................................................................................. 12

PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY ............................................................................................. 13

GEORGE FREDRICK HANDEL ............................................................................................. 13

CARL ORFF ........................................................................................................................... 14

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The Treble clef • The purpose of the treble clef is to show the person playing or singing

music, that the pitch will be high. • The treble clef is mostly played with the right hand on a piano, as the

higher pitches on the keyboard are situated on the right hand side.

Letter names of the treble clef Remember: The spaces can be remembered as “FACE” and the lines can be remembered

by the rhyme, “Every Good Boy Drinks Fanta”.

The Bass Clef The Bass Clef is known as the clef for a male voice and for instruments with

low pitch. The sign for the bass clef resembles a cursive F, and is such

because it is situated around the note F on the stave.

Letter names of the notes in the Bass clef

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The notes on the lines are: G, B, D, F, A, and can be remembered as Good, Boys, Don’t,

Frighten, Animals. The notes in the spaces are: A, C, E, G, and can be remembered as All,

Cows, Eat, Grass.

The Stave The stave is the 5 lines and 4 spaces music notation is written on.

Note values

Semi-breve

Minim

Crotchet

Quaver

Semi-quaver

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Remember the dotted minim (dotted half note) is 3 counts long.

Families of Instruments Instruments are usually divided into four main groups/families: Woodwind, Brass, Strings and

Percussion.

Woodwind

Strings

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Brass

Percussion

Pitched Percussion Instruments

Unpitched Percussion Instruments

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Musical elements Pitch Pitch is how high or how low a sound is. Women usually have high pitched voices whereas

men usually have low pitched voices.

Dynamics Dynamics is how loud or how soft (the volume) a sound is played or sung.

Tempo Tempo is how fast or slow a song is played or sung.

Time signatures (Metre) The three time signatures that we are going to concentrate on are:

Duple metre (2/4)

Triple metre (3/4)

Quadruple metre (4/4)

Since the top number in this time signature is 2, the time signature

is called duple metre. Duple Metre has two beats per

bar/measure.

Since the top number in this time signature is 3, it is called triple metre. Triple metre has three beats per bar. This is also known

as waltz time.

Since the top number of this time signature is 4, the time signature

is called quadruple metre. Quadruple metre has four beats per

bar. This is the most common metre in music.

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The keyboard A musical keyboard is the set of adjacent levers or keys on a musical instrument. Keyboards

typically contain keys for playing the twelve notes of the Western musical scale, with a

combination of larger, longer keys and smaller, shorter keys that repeats at the interval of

an octave. The musical alphabet has 7 letters, namely A to G. This is what the piano

keyboard looks like:

Unison The definition of unison is: to perform musical parts at the same pitch or in the range of

an octave. This means to play or sing a piece of music on the same note.

Lyrics Lyrics are words that make up a song, usually consisting of verses and choruses or it can be

a poem relating to a category of poetry that expresses subjective thoughts and feelings, in a

song like form. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist.

Folk songs A Folk song is a song originating amongst people of a country or area and is mostly passed

on by oral tradition from one generation to the next. There are often more than one version of

the song. The lyrics and melody thereof is generally simple and easy to remember. An

example is Five Little Monkeys from, Tom Fisch.

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Round singing (Canon) A round is a song where all the voices or groups sing the same melody, but each voice starts

at a different time, so that the parts fit over each other. Examples of a round are: “Three blind

mice and Frere Jacques (Are you sleeping)”. An instrumental round is known as a canon, e.g.

Canon by Pachelbel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvNQLJ1_HQ0)

Repetition Repetition in music, is when a section, phrase or part of a song is sung or played

again, exactly the same as the first time. A literal repetition of a musical passage is

often indicated by the use of a repeat sign, or the instructions da capo or dal segno.

Repetition may be used as part and parcel of symmetry. This is a technique that may help to

unify a melody, theme or rhythm. If one finds a melodic or rhythmic figure that you like, and

one repeats it throughout the course of the melody or song, one must be careful not to repeat

it too much, as it may bore the listener.

Texture in music In music, texture is how the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic materials are combined in a

composition, thus determining the overall quality of the sound in a piece. One can have a

thick texture, which means the harmony is four part and more. When it is a thin texture, then

there might be only one melody and it will be less than 4 voices sounding at the same time.

Thin texture: Single line melody

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Part-song (SATB) The term "four-part harmony" refers to music written for four voices or for some other

musical medium – four musical instruments or a single keyboard instrument, for example -

where the various musical parts can give a different note for each chord of the music. It can

also be seen as four voices singing together, but each voice sings their own melody.

The four voices in a choir is called: Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass. The soprano voice is

the highest female voices in a choir. The alto is the lowest female voice in a choir. The tenor is the highest male voice in a choir, and the bass will be the lowest male voice in a choir. So if

one must order it, one can say the soprano is the highest voice, the alto is second highest,

the tenor is the second lowest and the bass is the lowest voice.

Thick texture: More than four harmony notes

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Choral music terms

Ensemble:

Assembled or ‘put together’. Any group of musicians who play together is known as a musical

ensemble.

Harmony:

Singers are in harmony, when their notes blend together to create musical chords.

Unison:

Singers sing melody as one voice or ‘together’.

A Capella:

When singers sing in harmony or unison, without any musical instruments playing while they

sing. Some A Capella ensembles include sounds and harmonies that seem to create the

sounds of the instrument accompaniment.

Solo: This is a part that one singer sings on his/her own, within a choir. This singer is known as a

soloist.

Chorus:

This is a part of a song which is repeated (also known as ‘refrain’). Singing in chorus means

singing together.

The National Anthem of South Africa

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'Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika' was composed by a Methodist school teacher named Enoch Sontonga

in 1897. It was first sung as a church hymn, but later became an act of political defiance

against the government. 'Die Stem' is a poem written by C. J. Langenhoven in 1918 and was

set to music by the Reverend Marthinus Lourens de Villiers in 1921. 'Die Stem van Suid-

Afrika' was the national anthem until 1994.

The national anthem today employs the five most widely spoken languages of South Africa's

eleven official languages – Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Afrikaans and English.

EDVARD GRIEG EDVARD GRIEG was born in Bergen, Norway on 15th June

1843. For most of its life, Norway struggled to be its own

nation, separate from unions with other countries. It was

Edvard’s music that helped give Norway its own identity. For

his contribution, he came to be regarded as a hero to the

people of Norway. Many of his works include Norwegian

folksongs, where he paints a musical picture of the landscape

of the beautiful countryside. He set Henrik Ibsen’s stage play Peer Gynt to music, which

includes two of his best known works: Morning Mood and In the Hall of the Mountain King. Listen to the music of: Morning Mood by Grieg

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRlXnoC0ySs)

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN was born in Bonn, Germany in

1770. His talent was recognized early on, and by 1778 he was

learning to play the organ and the viola, in addition to his piano

studies. In 1787, young Beethoven decided to travel to Vienna,

hoping to meet and study composition with Wolfgang Amadeus

Mozart. By his twenties he began to suffer from hearing loss.

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He did, however, continue to compose, conduct and perform, even though he was completely

deaf. One story recalls that after conducting the premiere of his Ninth Symphony, which

includes the melody Ode to Joy, he had to be turned around to see the overwhelming

applause of the audience. He is remembered as an important composer in the transitional

period between the Classical Era and the Romantic Era in music.

Listen to the music of: Ode to Joy by Beethoven

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87qT5BOl2XU)

PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY was born in 1840 in the

present–day Udmurtia, Russia. His father was a Ukrainian mining

engineer. The only music instruction he received, were piano

lessons from a piano manufacturer, who occasionally made visits

to the School of Judisprudence. On attending the Opera and

Theater, it was the works of Rossini, Bellini, Verdi and Mozart that

he enjoyed the most. In 1861, he heard about classes being

offered by the Russian Musical Society. In the following year, he

followed his teacher to the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he met and studied with Anton

Rubinstein. Rubinstein was impressed with Tchaikovsky’s talent.

GEORGE FREDRICK HANDEL http://mesenescent.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/georg_friedrich_hc3a4ndel.jpg

George Fredrick Handel was born on February 23, 1685 in the North

German province of Saxony, in the same year as the Baroque

composer Johann Sebastian Bach. In 1702, he accepted a position as

the organist at the Protestant Cathedral. In the next year, he moved to

Hamburg and accepted a position as violinist and harpsichordist at the

opera house. It was there that he wrote and produced his first opera.

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In 1710, Handel accepted the position of Kapellmeister to George, Elector of Hanover, who

was soon to be King George 1 of Great Britain. In 1712, Handel settled in England where

Queen Anne gave him a yearly income. By 1740, Handel completed his most memorable

work - ‘The Messiah’. It is said that when the king first heard the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ he rose

to his feet. This tradition continues to this day.

Watch the Royal Choral Society perform the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUZEtVbJT5c

On April 6, 1759 Handel conducted his last performance of the “Messiah” and returned home

in poor health. He died on April 14, 1759 and was buried in Poet’s Corner of Westminster

Abby in London, England.

CARL ORFF http://redmayor.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/carl_orff.jpg

Carl Orff was a German composer and educator born in 1895. He

developed a unique approach to music education. He defined the

ideal music for children as “never alone, but connected with

movement, dance and speech - not to be listened to, but meaningful

only in active participation”. The levels include speech/chants,

movement, singing, drama and playing pitched and unpitched

instruments like the Recorder and Xylophone.

In 1935, he started work on Carmina Burana, a scenic cantata based on 24 poems from a

medieval collection. The first and last movements of the piece are called ‘Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi’ – ‘Fortune Empress of the World’ and starts with the very well known, ‘O Fortuna’.

Carl Orff died in Munich in 1982.

Watch Andre Rieu, his orchestra and singers perform ‘O Fortuna’:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oamDtZZdQfw