Writing your Concert Reports: Using the notes you took during the concert and some quick internet research on the piece(s) you heard, write a report on the concert.
If you need help with ideas on what to write about, you may consider the questions below. Be sure to identify the names of the pieces you listened to, who composed them, and who performed them. There is no set format for this assignment.
Your writing should reflect what you found interesting and noteworthy about the concert and what you learned about its history and composition from your research. Your concert report should be about what you find most interesting from the concert and should incorporate music concepts and vocabulary that you have learned in the course.
Write a report of 400–500 words for each of the three concerts you attend, double-spaced in 12-point font. Your concert reports will be graded all together at the end of the semester. Submit your concert reports by uploading one document in the Concert Reports Module. You will need to listen to the entire concert, so consider spacing your concert listening out over the semester. And feel free to listen to more than three!!!
Possible questions to address in your concert reports:
1. When, where, and why was this piece composed?
2. How did the composer structure the piece and why?
3. What were some of the individual movements or songs titled, how did they sound, and how did they all fit together into a cohesive whole?
4. What were you able to discern about the rhythm, tempo, texture, meter, melody, harmony, instrumentation and timbre of the music? Can you describe the form of the music? Which instruments were prominent? Can you hear a musical idea being repeated, developed, or passed around between the performers?
5. How did the information from this course affect the way you understood or appreciated this music?
6. How did your expectations of the style, genre, ensemble, or composer affect how you experienced the music? Were you surprised by how it sounded? Did you already have a familiarity with this kind of music?
7. How did the “non-musical” aspects of the performance affect your experience? Were you interested by the physical expressions of the performer(s)? Did you find the behavior of the audience striking in any way? What social conventions did you experience during the performance, and how did they impact your overall response to the concert?
8. Did you enjoy the music? Will you seek out more music of this kind? Why or why not?
9. How did this style of music fit with the music you are most comfortable listening to?
symphony / concerto
Manuel de Falla – Nights in the Gardens of Spain
Chamber Music
Manuel Maria Ponce – Sonata III
Vocal Music
J.S. Bach – Cantata BWV 29
