An egocentric-sounding passage from 秘密 (The Secret)

Last year, I stumbled across a copy of the Chinese version of The Secret in a university book store. Having never read The Secret, and being curious to know what exactly it's about, I bought the book. Later on, I stumbled across it again in the Self-Help section of a book store in Singapore, and upon opening it and finding out that The Secret is mainly just about positive thinking, my first thought was "This is just an example of very, very good marketing." Back home, curious as to whether people really believed stuff like the "Law of Attraction," I googled reviews of The Secret. Apparently at the end the whole book really does boil down to Byrne's commandment that we all "Feel good now," or something, which is all nice-sounding and stuff, but the truth is, I don't believe that we have that much control over how we feel, though we can control how we handle our feelings. I wanted to see what that looked like in the Chinese version, but on the last page (before the summary and background information on people referred to in the book), I instead found an even more egocentric passage. I couldn't understand all of it at first, but what I could understand made me raise my eyebrows until they'd practically rocketed off the top of my head (gee, I'm glad that my thoughts aren't going to manifest such an occurrence in real life). By the way, the emphasis is not added: the word "你" is actually written in bold print, just to drive the egocentric message even further.

地球为你而转动，海洋为你潮涨潮退，鸟儿为你唱歌，太阳为你朝升暮落，星星也是为了你而出现。你所看到的一切美丽事物，所体验到的一切美妙经验，都是为了你而存在的。看看周遭的一切，没有你，它们没有一个能存在。不论过去你认为自己是谁，现在，你知道真正的自己的真相了。你是你自己宇宙的主宰，你是你自己王国的继承者，你是生命的圆满。现在，你知道这秘密了。

Now, I'm not sure if I've translated this right, so I'll post my translation here just to make sure that I'm not imagining things (or "attracting" things!) and that this really is one of the most egocentric-inspiring passages that I've ever read.

"The world turns for you, the ocean tides rise and lower for you, the birds sing for you, the sun rises and sets for you, the stars also appear for you. Every beautiful thing that you can see, every wonderful experience you have had, all exist for you. Look at everything around you- if you didn't exist, these things also would not be able to. No matter who you thought you were in the past, now you know who you truly are. You are the master of your universe, the ruler of your kingdom, life's satisfaction. Now you know this Secret."

I don't know about you, but I do not necessarily want the birds to sing specifically for me. Let the birds sing for themselves, or for whoever they choose to sing for.

And that is my two cents into the matter.

EDIT: Wow, I was pretty much right about the translation. From http://www.shiningthelightonthesecret.com/whatpeoplearesaying.htm, the actual ending of the book is:

The earth turns on its orbit for You. The oceans ebb and flow for You. The birds sing for You. The sun rises and it sets for You. The stars come out for You. Every beautiful thing you see, every wondrous thing you experience, is all there, for You. Take a look around. None of it can exist, without You. No matter who you thought you were, now you know the Truth of Who You Really Are. You are the master of the Universe. You are the heir to the kingdom. You are the perfection of Life. And now you know The Secret.

Redox in Action: Some Batteries plus Corrosion

Now that we've learned a bit more about redox, let's see how the stuff we've learned applies to the world around us! Yay. Now I sound like an overenthusiastic presenter on a children's TV show.

Continuing with the overenthusiastic children's TV presenter theme (because I feel like I need a lame way to amuse myself today)...

Hey, kids! You know all those batteries that you use to power up all your favourite toys and gadgets? Well, we're going to learn allllllllll about batteries. Well, maybe not all about them, because there's just so much to learn! So, today, we're just going to learn the basics.

The most common kind of battery that you'll see around the shops and in your electronic gizmos is the dry cell. The dry cell is probably called the dry cell because it has a kind of paste, rather than a liquid, inside it.

Here's a picture of the cross-section of a dry cell. The cross-section is what you would see if you cut a dry cell in half, riiiiiight down the middle! But don't try this at home, because it is very very dangerous, and we wouldn't want anyone to get hurt, would we?

You know how the different ends of the batteries are labelled positive and negative? Well, they're named that way for a reason. At the anode, which is the negative side of the battery, the zinc casing undergoes a reaction that produces electrons needed for current to flow.

Zn_(s) à Zn²⁺_(aq) + 2e^-

But wait! If the casing is reacting, how come the casing doesn't corrode? Well, that's because the zinc doesn't just react on its own: it's actually reacting with another substance called magnesium dioxide which is normally found in a powdered form around the graphite rod in the middle of the battery. When they make the batteries, they make sure that there isn't enough magnesium dioxide to react with all of the zinc.

2MnO_2(s) + 2NH₄⁺_(aq) + 2e^- à Mn₂O_3(s) + 2NH_3(aq) + H₂O_(l)

After those two reactions happen, the zinc ions from the first reaction combines with the ammonia from the second to produce another ion- a complex ion this time! Ooh, how exciting!

Zn²⁺_(aq) + 4NH_3(aq) à [Zn(NH₃)₄]²⁺_(aq)

Now, eventually, the outer shell of the dry cell does corrode. That's why you sometimes get battery leakages, where the paste inside the battery comes out. This can be very dangerous, so try not to leave your batteries in your electronic devices (or anywhere, really) for so long that they start leaking!

Why does the dry cell corrode even though there isn't enough magnesium dioxide? Well, that paste inside the dry cell doesn't just contain magnesium dioxide- it contains other stuff too, like ammonium chloride and zinc chloride! Ammonium ions in solution can create an acidic environment, which makes the cell corrode after a while.

Since the zinc ions, once formed, are no longer where the original zinc was, dry cells can't be recharged by making the reactions reverse, and you shouldn't try to recharge them either, as that's also quite dangerous! This inability to recharge makes dry cells primary cells, as opposed to secondary cells, which can recharge.

There's also a very similar cell, called the silver oxide cell! These kinds of cells are also primary cells- that is, they can't recharge. They normally appear in button form, like the batteries in watches and in some calculators! They also use the same anode reaction- the conversion of zinc to zinc ions- but silver oxide, rather than magnesium oxide, is consumed at the cathode.

Ag₂O_(s) + H₂O_(l) + 2e^- à 2Ag_(s) + 2OH^-_(aq)

Apparently they've started developing rechargeable versions of these cells, but most silver oxide cells that you'll encounter at this point in time aren't rechargeable. Make sure to only recharge rechargeable batteries, kids!

The next type of cell that I'm going to tell you all about is the lead-acid accumulator! Unlike the dry cell or silver oxide cell, which produce relatively small currents of electricity, the lead-acid accumulator is created to produce lots and lots of current in a very short amount of time. It's often used in cars.

The lead-acid accumulator is actually made up of a bunch of different cells, each with an anode and a cathode. Each electrode has a lead alloy grid, but the anode's grid is packed with finely divided lead and the cathode's grid is divided with lead (IV) oxide powder. You see, when you finely divide something, it makes the reaction proceed much much faster than if you had it all in one single thick lump!

Anode: Pb_(s) + SO₄^2-_(aq) à PbSO_4(s) + 2e^-

Cathode: PbO_2(s) + SO₄^2-_(aq) + 4H⁺_(aq) + 2e^- à PbSO_4(s) + 2H₂O_(l)

Also, unlike the previous two batteries, these cells are secondary cells. They can recharge, which makes them much more useful for much longer! You can't recharge them too fast, though, or water might be electrolysed to hydrogen gas and oxygen gas, which would mean that you'd have to top up the battery with distilled water. Not only that, but it might explode and that would defeat the whole idea of the battery being useful for a long time!

2PbSO_4(s) + 2H₂O_(l) à Pb_(s) + PbO_2(s) + 4H⁺_(aq) + 2SO₄^2-_(aq)

There are many other kinds of batteries, but there's not enough time to cover them all in today's show. We might be able to talk about them in a future episode. So that's all for now, kids! Stay safe, and look after your batteries!

...

Whew. Now that the show's over, I can go back to being an obnoxious teenager.

By the way, one of my friends' older sisters was watching a whole bunch of kids' shows just to look out for any mistakes that the producers made. Once, she was watching Play School and, at the end, right before the camera was turned off, you could hear someone in the background say, "I hate my job!"

Just some random trivia for you. No, I don't know what episode that is, so I can't help you find it.

Anyway. I'm not going to talk about the other types of batteries, for now at least. Instead, I'm going to talk about corrosion. Yay?

Metals rust and corrode when they're exposed to water and oxygen. How so? you may ask. Well, if you have a look at your data sheet, you'll notice that water and oxygen can be reduced to form hydroxide ions!

O_2(g) + H₂O_(l) + 4e^- à 4OH^-_(aq)

And, as you probably already know if you've become familiar with the basics of redox, many metals can oxidise. Therefore, what we have here is a redox process of sorts, with the metal oxidising and the oxygen and water reducing.

Bear in mind, though, that those metals right at the bottom of the Standard Reduction Potentials table aren't likely to corrode in the same way. This is because these metals oxidise so readily they tend to react really violently with water to produce hydrogen gas, metal ions and hydroxide ions. Take potassium, for instance:

K_(s) + H₂O_(l) à K⁺_(aq) + OH^-_(aq) + H_2(g)

Also, some of the metals near the top of the table won't corrode simply because they're more likely to reduce than water and oxygen are. These metals include gold and silver.

Most other metals, like iron and zinc, will corrode. In fact, iron is very commonly referred to in corrosion questions and examples. My textbook only gives the equations for the rusting of iron. I highly doubt this is really breaching copyright, since you'd probably be able to find all the equations on Google anyway, so here they are:

1. Hydroxide ions produced from the reduction of water and oxygen and iron (II) ions produced by the oxidation of iron combine to produce iron (II) hydroxide: Fe²⁺_(aq) + 2OH^-_(aq) à Fe(OH)_2(s)
2. Iron (II) hydroxide is easily oxidised (more so than iron) to produce iron (III) oxide: Fe(OH)_2(s) + OH^-_(aq) à Fe(OH)_3(s) + e^-
3. The iron (III) hydroxide is then partially dehydrated to produce hydrated iron oxide, or Fe₂O₃·xH₂O. This is basically just rust, that flaky reddish stuff.

Also, as iron (II) ions are consumed to produce the two hydroxides, the reaction producing these ions is favoured in order to partially restore the number of ions- remember good ol' Châtelier? Since the reaction producing these ions also happens to be the oxidation of iron, the rusting process essentially speeds up the rusting process. Brilliant.

Now, we like our things to last, don't we? So, how can we stop our iron tidbits from corroding? Here are some ways we can prevent a metal from corroding:

1. We can coat it with a more reactive metal or connect it via a wire to another more reactive metal. This metal acts as a "sacrificial anode" and will rust instead of the iron or whatever metal that you're trying to protect. If you coat the metal with a less reactive metal, however, then any small scratch on the coating will cause the metal inside to corrode faster. Ditto with linking the metal up to a less reactive metal.
2. Cathodic protection: In cathodic protection, the metal to be protected is linked up to the negative terminal of a DC (direct current) power source, while some scrap metal is linked up to the positive terminal. The negative terminal of the power source provides all the electrons that the iron needs to stay as a metal- if any iron dares become an ion, it will simply collect the electrons being fed to it and become iron again.
3. Some metals are awesome and actually stop themselves from corroding in the long run. Take aluminium, for example. When aluminium oxidises, it forms aluminium oxide, which actually forms a protective coating that stops any further oxidation. Pretty handy, huh?

That's pretty much all from me on corrosion, unless you feel I haven't covered enough. I might do another post on the different kinds of cells if I can be bothered, but for now I'll just go on to thinking about writing posts about organic chemistry. (Actually writing them might be a little tougher.)

Redox reactions (including the T-word)

The first thing that you have to know is how to write equations for and interpret observations for redox reactions. But we've already done writing equations! you might say, and you're right, since I've already talked about them in my post aptly titled "Redox Equations."  We haven't done observations, though, because observations are totally a whole new ball game. Not.

Basically, the first thing that you need to do is write the equation. Then have a look to see if any of these things happen:

• Gases are bubbled through the liquid
• Gases are produced
• Solids dissolve
• Solids form
• The solution changes colour (use your data sheet to determine the colour of reactant and product ions)

Once you've determined these things, you need to make sure to provide detail. If a gas is bubbled through or if a gas is produced, what colour is the gas, and what does it smell like? Most gases are colourless and odourless, but some have a colour, like chlorine gas which is greenish-yellow. Additionally, most gases are odourless, but there are some that are considered to have a "pungent odour" like hydrogen sulfide (and maybe nitrogen dioxide, I can't remember). If a solid is dissolved or formed, what colour is the solid? (By the way, you have to use what the data sheet tells you. So yes, that means you have to say that copper is "salmon pink.") Also, generally, in a redox reaction, where one solid dissolves and another forms, you can just say that the first solid is coated with the second. I think.

A couple of common ion colours that you should know are the permanganate ion (purple) which can be reduced to manganese (II) ions (pink) and the dichromate ion (orange) which can be reduced to chromate ions (yellow). They're on the data sheet anyway, but they're so common in redox reactions that it's almost worth getting to know them.

What's next? Hm. Stoichiometry. Well, stoichiometry here works the same way as stoichiometry everywhere else, so if you need to brush up on that, head on over to the following posts:

• Simple Calculations Involving Moles
• Reactions and Equations, part deux
• Simple Chemistry Calculations
• Empirical Formulae and Limiting Reagents and Some Other Stuff

Next up: Explain the use of self-indicators in redox titrations. You know how you need an indicator of some kind in acid-base titrations? (If not, go to my post on titrations.) Well, in redox, you generally don't, because common oxidising agents used, like permanganate and dichromate ions, change colour when they're reduced anyway, and it's this colour change that helps you to work out an end point.

Redox titrations are a bit more complex than acid-base titrations because you normally have to go to all the work of sufficiently acidifying the permanganate or dichromate ion solutions otherwise you'll end up with manganese dioxide or chromate ions later on.

Now, a bit more about redox titrations. A primary standard needed here is something that's going to oxidise or reduce, otherwise you wouldn't end up with a redox reaction! Oxalic acid (H₂C₂O₄ , otherwise known as HOOCCOOH which is kinda like Ho-oh with some extra letters added in) is often used for redox titrations as a primary standard because it can be prepared to a high degree of purity and whatnot (my first post on titrations outlines the main characteristics of primary standards).

When using potassium permanganate solution, you have to take all kinds of precautions because it oxidises stuff easily and also decomposes in solution, especially in sunlight. When you prepare the solution, you sometimes have to cover the beaker and boil the solution before filtering it through glass wool into a dark storage bottle. Now, I'm not 100% sure on the science behind all of this, because we haven't really done a lot of redox titrations, but I think the boiling might be to get rid of stuff within the solution that the potassium permanganate might oxidise? I'm not sure exactly what stuff needs to be removed, but there you go. As for the glass wool, I have absolutely no idea whatsoever (and I'm feeling too lazy to look it up right now), so if someone could enlighten me, that would be great! If not, that's okay, you don't have to do all my dirty work for me.

The rest of the titration proceeds in pretty much the same way as an acid-base titration, except for a couple of differences:

1. You have to add sulfuric acid (NOT hydrochloric acid, as the chlorine ions will be oxidised by the permanganate ions) to the solution so that the permanganate or dichromate or whatever solution will form your desired products (i.e. manganese (II) ions rather than manganese dioxide).
2. You have to heat the conical flask before reaction because the reaction proceeds too slowly at room temperature. (Well, too slowly for our purposes, anyway.)
3. You don't have to add indicator because permanganate ions are purple and they should turn pink (or a murky brownish colour if you didn't add enough acid) and dichromate ions are orange and they should turn deep green (or yellow if you didn't add enough acid). However, I've also heard that occasionally the permanganate solution might turn clear instead of pink despite what it says on the data sheet.

Whew. That wasn't so bad. I guess it's easier talking about titrations than actually doing them.

Redox again- Electrolytic cells and some other stuff

(Lack of introduction here because I can't be bothered.)

Previous posts on redox:

• Basics of Redox
• Redox Equations
• Electrolysis
• Applications of Electrolysis
• Ways to Remember Oxidation and Reduction

As with pretty much every other topic we've done this year, the redox stuff this year pretty much takes off from what we did last year. The main difference is that we're going to be talking about electrolytic cells rather than electrolysis- rather than running an electric current through a substance to make a reaction occur, we're using the transfer of electrons in redox reactions to produce electricity. I think.

Anyway, let's take a look at what we need to know.

We still need to know basic stuff like oxidation numbers, as outlined in the Basics of Redox post. Additionally, we need to know how to balance redox equations in normal and in acidic conditions, both of which are outlined in Redox Equations.

By the way, I also know how to balance equations in alkaline conditions. Basically, what you do is you balance the equation as if it's in acidic conditions, then add OH- ions to both sides to turn all H+ into water. Just make sure that water's only left on one side of the equation afterwards.

As an example, let's take the acidic conditions example from the Redox Equations post:

MnO₄^- + 8H⁺ + 5e^- -> Mn²⁺ + 4H₂O

For alkaline conditions, there need to be OH- ions. Accordingly, I add 8OH- to each side (to get rid of H+):

MnO₄^- + 8H⁺ + 8OH^- + 5e^- -> Mn²⁺ + 4H₂O + 8 OH^-

Next I combine the H+ and OH- on the left hand side into water:

MnO₄^- + 8H₂O + 5e^- -> Mn²⁺ + 4H₂O + 8 OH^-

Finally, I cancel out 4 water molecules from each side, and I'm done!

MnO₄^- + 4H₂O + 5e^- -> Mn²⁺ + 8 OH^-

Hmm... what else... "Apply the table of Standard Reduction Potentials to determine the relative strength of oxidising and reducing agents to predict reaction tendency." This isn't too hard. Basically, the higher an element's reduction potential, the more likely it is to be reduced. This, conversely, makes the element a better oxidising agent. Hence, fluorine is a great oxidising agent, and potassium ions are pretty crap in comparison.

When strong oxidants get reduced, they become weak reductants. For example, fluorine, a strong oxidant, can be reduced to fluoride ions which are relatively weak reductants when compared to potassium (which is what you get when potassium ions are reduced).

Another way of thinking about this is by flipping around everything on the Standard Reduction Potentials table to essentially get a Standard Oxidation Potentials table. To get the oxidation potential of the reverse reaction for any reaction on the table, just change the positive or negative sign of the reduction potential.

Okay, I realise that that probably doesn't make sense, so here's an example.

The reduction potential of F₂ + 2e^- à 2F^- is 2.89V. Therefore, the oxidation potential of 2F^- à  F₂ + 2e^- is just -2.89V.

Similarly, if a reaction's reduction potential is negative, the reverse reaction's oxidation potential will be positive.

You might also need to know some of the common oxidants and reductants, though if you're studying Chemistry you'll probably know them already from encountering them often. Possibly the two most common oxidising agents that you'll encounter are the permanganate ion (MnO₄^-) and the dichromate ion (Cr₂O₇^2-), as these are commonly used in redox titrations (titrations AND redox... the two parts of Chemistry that I hate most combined into one... what could be better?).

Other common oxidising agents that you'll need to know, according to my course outline, are oxygen (!), chlorine, the hypochlorite ion (ClO^-- I love Google sometimes), the hydrogen ion, concentrated sulfuric acid and concentrated nitric acid. With regards to the latter two- I think that it's mainly the hydrogen ions in sulfuric acid that oxidise stuff, while that job's given to the nitrate ions in nitric acid, as nitrate ions are better oxidants than hydrogen ions. If you happen to be doing the same Chem course as me you'll notice that nitrate ions have conveniently been left off the data sheet, so here's an equation- two equations, in fact- showing how nitrate ions can be reduced:

NO₃^-_(aq) + 4H⁺_(aq) + 3e^- à NO_(g) + 2H₂O_{(l)     +0.96V}

NO₃^- _(aq) + 2H⁺_(aq) + e^- à NO_2(g) + H₂O_{(l)       +0.80V}

Now, you may ask, out of these two equations, which one will occur in a reaction? Well, judging by the reduction potentials, the top reaction is more likely to happen. I'm assuming that the lower reaction will probably only occur when there aren't enough hydrogen ions. Sorta like how the permanganate ion might reduce to manganese dioxide if the permanganate solution isn't acidified enough.

Due to the nitrate ions being more readily reduced than hydrogen ions in, say, hydrochloric acid, copper will react with concentrated nitric acid, but not with hydrochloric acid. Just some trivia for y'all.

Now let's have a quick look at common reducing agents that you'll need to know. Many metals are good reducing agents, like zinc and magnesium. Hydrogen gas is also a common reducing agent. Iron (II) ions also sometimes oxidise to iron (III) ions (though I'm fairly sure iron itself is a better reductant than its ions), and the chromate ion (C₂O₄^2-) can oxidise to the dichromate ion.

What's up next? Hmm... electrolytic cells! Yay.

Basically, an electrolytic cell is actually made up of two half-cells: one positive, one negative. Each cell consists of some kind of electrode in solution. These electrodes are joined together by a wire which allows for the flow of electrons when the redox reaction between different substances in the cell takes place. I *think* that it's this very flow of electrons that produces electricity. My vague understanding of current from not doing physics and hardly being able to understand the relief teacher/ not really paying attention in year 9 science is that current is basically just the flow of electrons. To complete the circuit, there must be something else connecting these two cells: in the lab, we can just use a salt bridge (a filter paper dipped in solution) with ions that won't react with the ions in either solution. A common solution used for creating a salt bridge is potassium nitrate because neither potassium nor nitrate ions will cause anything to precipitate out of solution.

Enough blabbering on, here's a diagram:

Just like in good ol' electrolysis, the anode is where oxidation takes place and the cathode is where reduction takes place. When stuff gets oxidised at the anode, electrons are removed from whatever is being oxidised and then travel down the wire to the cathode, where they reduce the other substance in question. The salt bridge completes the circuit by allowing charged particles like ions to move between the cells. Since stuff is being oxidised and is becoming more positive in the anode cell, negative ions will migrate towards the anode. Similarly, since stuff is being reduced and is becoming more negative in the cathode cell, positive ions will migrate there.

Also, I need someone to help me out here: is the anode the negative cell, as it produces electrons, while the cathode is the positive cell? This is where I always end up guessing on Chemistry tests. (Well, not always- we've only been asked a total of 2-3 questions about this- 1-2 on the redox test, and one on the exam.)

Sometimes, the electrode in each cell will be a metal and the electrolyte will simply be a solution containing ions of the metal used in the electrode. This, however, is not always the case. The only metal and metal ions that you really need are the ones that are going to take part in the reaction. For example, if you want to utilise a reaction between zinc and nickel (zinc being more likely to oxidise to zinc ions), you do need a zinc electrode in one cell and a nickel ion electrolyte in the other, but you get some degree of choice in the rest. In the zinc cell, the electrolyte can be any solution containing ions (I think that you need ions to help with the flow of electricity- maybe water will suffice in some cases?) that won't react with the zinc. Normally, it's easiest just to use a solution with zinc ions, but I think (I'm not sure) that you can use a solution with manganese or aluminium ions which won't react with the zinc. In the nickel cell, the electrode can be any metal that won't react with the nickel ions- normally graphite or platinum are used as they are inert substances.

What happens if you want to use a gas, like hydrogen gas, as an electrode? Well, that's possible too. What you do is you bubble the gas over a platinum (or carbon, since platinum and carbon are inert) wire/mesh electrode. The wire serves to carry the electrons and the mesh is probably there to increase surface area. I dunno. 

Speaking of hydrogen, there's actually a very special half-cell called the hydrogen half cell which has been assigned a standard reduction potential of 0V. (Did you think that that was an awesome coincidence? I might have. Actually, I can't really remember if I even gave two hoots about it back in Year 11.) All of the other half-cells have had their standard reduction potentials assigned by comparing them to the hydrogen half cell. Here is the hydrogen half-cell, in only some of its glory (well? It's a bit hard for something to maintain its full glory after I've mutilated it on Paint!):

Note that the pressure of the gas, the concentration of the acid and the temperature are all controlled. This is because the standard reduction potentials can change depending on temperature, pressure and concentration. That's right: those Standard Reduction Potentials aren't set in stone. I think most tables show them for 1 mol/L solutions (for substances that are in solutions) at 25 degrees Celsius. (As for gaseous substances, I'm not sure, but I think that they're probably for 101.3kPa, or 1atm. Or 760mmHg if you're that way inclined.)

To work out the standard reduction potentials of other standard cells (cells at 25 degrees C and whatever pressure/concentration is considered "standard"), the other standard cells are hooked up to a standard hydrogen half cell and the voltage recorded. The positive and negative values are assigned depending on what direction the electrons are flowing: if they're going from the hydrogen half cell to the other cell, the values are positive, whereas if they're going from the other cell to the hydrogen half cell, then the values are negative.

Oh, silly me. I've forgotten to tell you all how to calculate the electrical potential of a cell using the table!

Basically, write down the oxidation and reduction half-reactions taking place in the cell (or don't, if you prefer to work mentally). Add the reduction potential for the reduction half-reaction and the oxidation potential for the oxidation half-reaction together to get the electrical potential of the cell. Yay! (I briefly outlined how to work out the oxidation potential earlier in this post.)

By the way, if you get a negative value, you might want to check that you've got your anode and cathode reactions the right way around. Electrical potential values should be positive.

That's pretty much the main stuff covered on redox. Next up will probably be stuff on dry cells (batteries, yay) and corrosion. Oh, and redox titrations, if I can bring myself to write about them.

I still hate redox. And I still hate titrations. They make me really angry for some reason.

Anyway.

TTFN!

The Lit Formula: Playing the Game of Lit- Part 2

(Part 1 can be found at http://year11misadventures.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/the-lit-formula-playing-game-of-lit.html)

In Part 1, I talked about answering the question and structuring your essay. Now I'm going to talk about a few other little details that you might need to know.

A Very Quick Word on Course Concepts

Course concepts are all hidden in the educational waffle in the syllabus. Yes, that thing that hardly anyone reads. If you do read it, I'd recommend that you only read the 3B one or the condensed one with both units- the 3B syllabus has a couple more dot points than the 3A one and, apart from that, there's only a one word difference between the two so it's not worth wasting your time reading both.

The long and short of it is, there's only a limited amount of stuff that they can ask you about. This helps when studying, because then you could just look at how each text addresses each course concept. Of course, not every text is geared to address every single one, but it's nice to see how many different ways you can look at a text (or at least I find that it helps me to feel reasonably confident in the exam room).

Some more reasons why you'll need to know the course concepts are a) because they give you something to write about in your thesis statements and b) they give you something to look for in your Close Readings. If you can't find anything to write about, just think, "Hmm, is there any way I could tie this to genre? Context? Intertextuality?"

Anyway, without further ado, here is a condensed list of course concepts that could be thrown at you. Make sure to get yourself familiarised with them.

• Genres and generic conventions
• Language
• Context- social, historical, cultural, reader's own context
• Values and ideologies
• Aesthetic functions
• Reading intertextually
• Discourses- different ways of thinking and talking about the world
• How nations recognise themselves through their literary texts (an example of a question that asks this is "How might literary works help us to recognise ourselves as Australians?")
• Reading practices- feminism, Marxism, new-historicism, post-colonialism etc.

More Big Words

Sometimes the idea that you want to talk about involves some other big word, like postmodernism, determinism and so on. If you are going to use these words, make sure that 1) you make sure to tie your reading to those course concepts and 2) you ensure that you fully understand whatever term that you're trying to use. I tend to stray away from big words so my advice here would be to write some practice essays and show your teacher so that at least you know whether you're on the right track or whether you should avoid using these terms until you learn more.

Using Quotes, or "[Making] Strategic and Cticial Use of Supporting Evidence Including Quotes and/or Examples"

As I've stated previously, you need to back up all your points with evidence. To assist you there, I'm now going to explain how to integrate your evidence.

Most of your evidence will probably come in the form of quotes. Therefore, it helps to use quotes fluently. It's a bit hard to explain this, but I'll have a go. Basically, only use the part of the quote that you really need, and try and make it flow into the sentence as much as possible, such that the sentence would make sense even without the quotation marks. You shouldn't have to use the word "quote" to talk about quotes. In a take-home essay, you need to put the page number of the quote in brackets (parentheses for any US folks out there reading this) after the quote. If you're referencing a scholarly article, you need to put the author's surname in the brackets too. Here's some examples of using quotes:

• Huberto initially "[scratches] a living through hustling and petty thievery" (62), and Eva is tossed from employer to employer to earn money for her madrina.
• He refers to Claudius, his uncle who has become king so soon after his father's death, as "a little more than kin, and less than kind."
• Not knowing what to do or say, to have lines "not simply forgotten but never learned" is an "actor's traditional nightmare" (Zeifman 205).

You might also notice that I've used square brackets in the first quote. Square brackets are used if you need to alter a verb tense or a pronoun to fit your sentence. They can also be used if you need to change a lowercase letter to uppercase (but I don't think it's absolutely necessary to use square brackets here). In the first quote, I think that it was originally "scratching," but it wouldn't make sense to say "Huberto initially scratching a living." Thus, I had to change the verb tense to let the sentence flow.

Another use of square brackets in quotes that you might have seen is the word [sic]. You probably won't have to use this yourself, unless you're quoting something from the first part of Flowers for Algernon or another text with deliberate spelling and grammar errors. Simply put, if what you're quoting has spelling or grammatical errors, you can use [sic] to show that you are simply keeping the original spelling and grammar intact.

We're nearly there. Just one more quick point!

Expression of Ideas

Expression of ideas isn't something that I can just explain. Everyone has their own unique writing styles and it is up to you to develop yours. Reading and writing are probably the two best ways to help you achieve this. Your teachers will probably also be willing to help if you show them essay drafts.

I wish you luck on your adventures studying Lit!

For fellow Year 12s: Just two more Lit exams EVER (unless you fail and have to sit the sup- apparently the sup's really easy though, which is good). Yay! No more timed Lit essays EVER after these two last exams!

The Lit Formula: Playing the Game of Lit- Part 1

I'm one of those people who just wants to pass Lit, but I seem to be doing pretty well in it lately so I think I might actually be in a reasonable position to give pointers to other people who just want to pass.

One of the most frustrating things with Lit is that it's not that obvious what it is that you need to do to pass and what you can do to improve. With maths and science subjects, you can always just do more questions to help build your understanding and in some cases just rote-learn the content that you need (the latter doesn't really work for me as I'm blessed with a terrible memory for rote-learning- yes, I mostly see it as a blessing- but it might work for some other people). Lit seems rather subjective, though, and sometimes the comments you get only really seem relevant to that one particular essay. So how does one improve their Lit marks?

Well, in Lit, just like any other subject, if your aim is simply to pass, then it helps to just learn the rules of the game and work from there. Normally I condone this somewhat reductionist approach to learning- you should be learning to learn, not just for the Curriculum Council's stupid little game- but an approach like this might be what you need to jump-start your understanding and increase your capacity to learn this subject.

That's enough waffling. Now for actual content.

First up: what are the rules of the game?

Let's look at the marking key. It's divided into 5 sections: quality of reading, engagement with task, expression of ideas, use of key concepts/literary terms and use of supporting evidence.

• Quality of reading is all about "[presenting] a detailed and critical reading of the text" and " [commenting] astutely on language and/or generic conventions and/or context." This is where the bulk of the marks lies. I'm not 100% sure what all this educational gobbledygook means (wow, Google Chrome doesn't mark "gobbledygook" as being incorrectly spelled), but I think it's all about content: how detailed and insightful is your response, and how much does it tie to relevant features of the text, like language, generic conventions and context?
• Engagement with task: This one is kind of weirdly worded. I think all they want here is for you to answer the question, or, as my maths teacher puts it, ATBQ (Answer The Bloody Question). Your essay also needs to have "focus and direction" to get a good mark in this category- I guess this means that your entire essay needs to be relevant (focus) and well-structured (direction).
• Expression of ideas: This is basically about how well you can get your ideas onto paper and how clear you can make them. You can get the full 6 marks of this category if you can write in a "sophisticated and lucid style" but if you, like me, like to play it safe and just be clear and simple, you can still net 4-5 marks here. Structure also helps here too.
• Use of key concepts/literary terms: This is where you get marks for using fancy terms. But you can't just use fancy terms- you have to use them well, and at least look like you know what you're talking about. (Unfortunately, it's not so easy to bluff in Lit if you don't know what you're talking about. English teachers are very good at reading between the lines. That's why they're English teachers.)
• Use of supporting evidence: Quotes! Quotes galore! And also other relevant examples and stuff too. When you use supporting evidence, however, you need to make sure that it fits in to what you are talking about and that the quote kind of "flows" in with everything else you are writing.

So to recap: Answer the question with the most insightful response you can muster, put in some quotes and literary terms and try and express all your ideas clearly if not in a "sophisticated and lucid manner" and then you'll be on the road to some good marks in Lit!

Of course, it's not that easy, which is why I'm going to break things down even further.

Engaging with the Task: Answering the Bloody Question

Answering the question sounds like such a simple task, but it's something so often forgotten about in the quest to write a good essay. Remember that you're not just writing an essay: you're providing an answer or a response to whatever's being asked of you. Sometimes, though, the question isn't all too easy to understand, or it's written in such academic gobbledygook discourse (a key Lit term!) that the question is obscured. Let's take a look at how to dissect these questions.

The first step is finding the 2 or 3 main parts to the question. Nearly all questions have a few main parts: one relating to course concepts like genre or intertextuality, and another relating to ideas. Normally the questions are broad- the exam writers don't know what texts you've studied, after all. Normally the question will point to a specific convention, or a specific idea, or occasionally both. (Of course, some questions don't point to anything specific, but most questions of this type that I've seen are better left avoided unless you have a text that really matches the question.)

The first sample question in my course handbook is "How can knowledge of the context of a text's production help readers to make meanings from it?" This question relates to the specific course concept of context, and then points towards the broad idea of the making of meaning. In answering this question, you would have to talk mainly about context, but then you would be able to (read: have to) push context towards whatever meanings you want to make. When planning, you could perhaps go paragraph by paragraph according to different meanings made, or you could go paragraph by paragraph according to different contextual influences on the text.

A question in my course handbook of the opposite type is "Literature may be read as a form of social and/or cultural history. Discuss, referring to one or more literary texts you have studied." Here, course concepts aren't mentioned at all, but remember this- you ALWAYS have to talk about them, regardless of whether the question mentions them or not. In other words, while you must talk about the social and/or cultural history, you cannot just talk about the social and/or cultural history on its own without talking about how it relates to the text, otherwise what would be the point of Literature as a subject?

And of course sometimes you get questions that specify both course concept and idea, like, "How do intertextual readings contribute to the circulation or construction of value systems in a society?" Here you have your specific course concept- intertextuality- and your specific idea- the circulation or construction of value systems.

(And then there are horrible questions like the 2012 paper's "Works of literature invite us to experience the lives of others. Discuss with reference to one or more works you have studied." My suggestion is to run far away from these questions as it's pretty iffy. Whatever you do, though, don't do what the weakest students did, which was simply write essays fantasising about themselves as handmaids or whatever.)

So, in a nutshell: find out what 1 or 2 specific things they're asking you to address, and make sure you address those things all throughout your essay. Also, make sure that you talk about course concepts like genre, intertextuality, language and generic conventions, regardless of whether the question specifically asked for them or not.

Structure and Logic: They Have Their Place in Lit Too

Structure is pretty important in an essay. It helps organise your ideas and make your essay easier for your marker to follow, which in turn leads to better marks. Yay!

Essays are pretty structured pieces of writing, and they're all held together by a single thread: your thesis. A thesis statement is a sentence or two that sums up pretty much everything that you're going to talk about. In your body paragraphs, you expand on whatever it was that you were talking about in your thesis. Finally, your conclusion reiterates what you were talking about in your essay. Yes, it sounds like you're repeating yourself a lot, but it helps to get your point across.

Here's a brief stupid example to explain the structure of an essay. Let's say that I want to argue that clarinets are wonderful musical instruments. To do so, I'd have to come up with a few reasons why clarinets are so amazing:

1. They have a large pitch and dynamic range.
2. They are versatile and can play a wide variety of musical styles.
3. They are very portable.

Then I would incorporate all of this into my thesis: "I believe that clarinets are wonderful musical instruments due to their large pitch and dynamic range, their ability to play a wide variety of musical styles and their portability."

The thesis would normally be part of an introduction paragraph rather than just a stand-alone sentence, but if you are struggling to find something to write in a 60 minute close reading, or if you are writing an extended response for another subject that doesn't require a lot of eloquence, writing the thesis alone might suffice. (You can always write a proper introduction later if you have time- just make sure that it's clearly marked.) An introduction paragraph should just introduce what you are talking about, including uncommon key terms (i.e. not in the course syllabus) relevant to your subject matter. For example, in this particular non-essay about clarinets, you could introduce the clarinet by providing basic facts (e.g. it's a woodwind instrument, it has a single reed, it came into use in the Classical period) before launching into the thesis. I personally like to have the thesis at the end of the introduction paragraph because it comes as a sort of "climax" to the intro, but you can always have the thesis at the beginning if that floats your boat. Just make sure your thesis statement is obviously a thesis statement.

In each body paragraph, I would then expand on each of the points. For example, for the first point, I could provide the following expansion:

1. Clarinets have a large pitch range. They can play from a low E below the treble stave to a high G on several leger lines above the treble stave (standard range). It is possible to make the clarinet play even higher.
2. Clarinets have a large dynamic range. They can go from being very soft such that they can be used in "fading away" effects like in Frank Ticheli's Sanctuary, or they can be loud enough to play solos in orchestral music.

Note that for each point, I've provided my statement, plus some evidence and explanation. There's an acronym for this: SEE, or Statement, Evidence, Explanation. An alternative acronym is PEE, or Point, Evidence, Explanation. As one of my Year 10 English teachers put it, "Try and PEE several times in each paragraph!" (And make sure you have a basin or something beneath you. Umm.) Seriously, though, just make sure that you go into as much detail as need be, and back up everything you say with concrete evidence.

So how does this tie into a Lit essay? Well, that's easy. Your thesis will obviously be different because it'll be all about generic conventions and how they do this or that or the other, and then all throughout your body paragraphs you'll be breaking down your argument and providing evidence and explanations for everything. I'm not the best Lit student so I feel kind of tentative providing a Lit example of my own, but here's an example from my Close Reading on the Semester 1 exam.

Remember what I said before about each question having 2 parts: generic conventions and ideas? Well, make sure to address both of those parts in your thesis statement, even if the question was as vague as the good ol' Close Reading "present a reading." Here is the thesis statement from my Close Reading:

"The extract from Bereft can be read as a Romantic text exploring the beauty and power of nature as well as a Realist text that provides the truth "as it is" and comments on different societal issues through the use of imagery, structure and intertextuality."

Yes, it's kind of long-winded and maybe I should have broken it down into two sentences. But hey, it does the job... somewhat.

Stuff to notice here:

• "can be read"- in this Lit course you have to use words like "can be read," "may be read," "can be seen" etc. as a way of letting the markers know that you know that there's more than one correct way to read a text, because there is. (Why else would people complain about the subjectivity of English so much?)
• Generic conventions- as you can see, I pointed my thesis directly towards imagery, structure and intertextuality.
• Ideas- the ideas I pointed towards are Romanticism and Realism.

So basically, when you write your thesis statement, you have to make sure that you make your reading contingent (for lack of a better word) and you have to include both generic conventions and ideas. Try and tie your reading to one of the course concepts because the markers like that.

As for the body paragraphs, you can divide them up in different ways: you might choose to have a paragraph on each of the generic conventions, or a paragraph on each idea, depending on what best fits your argument. Sometimes it might even be best to talk about the text chronologically (e.g. stanza by stanza in the case of a poem). No matter which structure you choose, however, you have to stay close to the text and talk about those generic conventions! After all, this is an essay primarily about literature and not an essay primarily about determinism or Romanticism or whatever ideas you're talking about.

In this particular case, I divided my essay up by ideas, writing a couple of paragraphs about Romantic ideas and a couple of paragraphs about Realist ideas.

Which reminds me. Each paragraph should start with a topic sentence that sums up what that particular paragraph is going to be about. (Yes, you do a hell of a lot of summing up stuff in essays.) Making a topic sentence is just like making a thesis statement except it's a bit narrower because you're only talking about one of the points that you made in your thesis. For example, in my first paragraph about Romantic ideas, my topic sentence is "The extract can be read as a Romantic text portraying the beauty and power of nature through imagery and structure." Once again, it's tying to generic conventions and ideas- but only one particular idea in this case, since we're trying to narrow things down a bit so that we can go into further detail.

That topic sentence was my statement. Now I need some evidence and explanation for how structure and imagery help to portray Romantic ideas about the beauty and power of nature. Here is an example of evidence and explanation for each point:

• (Structure)
  Evidence: A whole paragraph near the beginning of the extract is dedicated to simply discussing the myriad of creatures that live in the ocean.
  Explanation: This highlights the importance of nature through this paragraph's prominent place in the text.
• (Imagery)
  Evidence: Visual imagery- "Birds [bathing] in the rainbows"
  Explanation: This is a peaceful and beautiful image as bathing is a calming task, as well as one that cleanses and makes one more beautiful, while rainbows have connotations of beauty and happiness.

I have several other examples in my paragraph. What ties them together is, of course, the way I choose to express my ideas- I'll briefly talk about this later.

After writing several body paragraphs detailing pretty much everything you wish to say, it's now time to write a conclusion summing up everything that you have written. I'll be honest with you here- I have no idea how to write conclusions. They always end up looking like my introductions. I think what you're meant to do is mainly just sum up everything that you've said, but at the same time you could hint at how your argument could be applicable to the real world (e.g. if you're talking about the patriarchal society as portrayed in Ibsen's A Doll's House you could argue that some elements of this society can still be seen in parts of the world today). You just have to be careful that you don't introduce too much new stuff. In any case I'm not very good at writing conclusions so I can't give too much advice here.

This post is getting quite long, so I'm going to round it off here and write a Part 2 about key terms and how to use quotes, among other things.

20th Century Onwards- Ralph Vaughan-Williams and his Songs of Travel

Before I begin, I just want to comment on a phenomenon that I find very odd indeed. Nearly all my posts have page view counts in single or double digits, and by double digits I mean like 30 max. My page on Tim Winton's The Turning, on the other hand, has scored 300+ page views, plus a +1! And, yes, I made sure that my settings don't count my own page views.

The most bizarre thing is, The Turning is the one book that I know that I'm definitely not going to write about in my final exam because it just didn't click with me. Not only was it my worst (as in, received the lowest mark) in-class essay all year but I had trouble finishing it. I quite liked reading Winton's children's books as a kid, but I'm not really one for the somewhat dark realistic fiction that The Turning offers, plus over the past couple of years I've been finding it somewhat difficult to get my mind to settle and concentrate on reading, particularly when it's about bad things happening to good people.

Maybe all of those page views and the +1 were actually from other students who share the same views as I do and just want a quick study guide...?

Anyway, back to Vaughan-Williams. Vaughan-Williams was heavily influenced by English folk songs, Tudor music and the poetry of Walt Whitman. He was very "English" and his music often reflected his nostalgia for the English countryside. He was born in Gloucestershire in 1872 and later studied music at Cambridge University and at the Royal College of Music in London. He began his career as a church organist, but in 1905 he also became the director of the amateur Leith Hill Music Festival and the next year became the editor of The English Hymnal, which he wrote some hymn tunes for. Between 1919 and 1939, he was also the professor of composition at the Royal College of Music. In 1935 he was awarded the Order of Merit for services to music and in 1939 his music was banned in Germany for apparently being "anti-Nazi propaganda." Like most other patriotic Brits of the time, Vaughan-Williams did join the army for WWI, working as part of the field ambulance services in the Royal Army Medical Corps. The exposure to gunfire damaged his hearing, causing him to become deaf later on in his life.

As I said before, Vaughan-Williams was heavily influenced by folk songs and all other things purely English. In fact, he also went around collecting them (just like Bartók and Kodály in Hungary). He arranged these folk songs and often incorporated them into his own compositions. He also took a lot of inspiration from English literature and from older English composers, writing a Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis and a Fantasia on Greensleeves. In the Fen Country was a more original composition by Vaughan-Williams that was based on the style of English folk music. Of course, with such a large compositional output, not all of it was based on English stuff- some of his works were also inspired by composers from other countries like Bach, Handel, Debussy and Ravel. In fact, he studied orchestration under Ravel.

The work that I'm going to focus on this time is Ralph Vaughan-Williams' Songs of Travel song-cycle, based off poetry by Robert Louis Stevenson, who was Scottish, not English. Ha. Anyway, it's composed for piano and baritone, and was originally published in two volumes. The accompaniment was later orchestrated by Vaughan-Williams himself, but I'm going to concentrate on the piano versions for now. Vaughan-Williams' piano accompaniments are usually simpler than those written by his contemporaries, but that's fine by me as it means that I can actually somewhat play the piano accompaniment to The Vagabond. Anyway, simplicity certainly doesn't mean ineffective in this case.

The entire song cycle is about a young man as he experiences all kinds of different trials and tribulations and lives and grows during his journey throughout life. These are themes that are also found in song-cycles by Schubert and Mahler, specifically Winterreise and Die Schoene Mulleren by Schubert and Lieder Eines Fahrenden Coselli by Mahler. The first eight songs were first performed in London in 1904 but there was one other song that was left unpublished at the time. It was later discovered by Vaughan-Williams' wife after his death, and was published in 1960. (That sounds like a long gap, but Vaughan-Williams died in 1958. Why Vaughan-Williams didn't finish the song between 1904 and his death is beyond me. Maybe he only thought to write it towards the end of his life, or maybe he ran out of inspiration.)

Most of the songs have little musical references to each other. For example, Youth and Love has a few references to the first part of the melody of The Vagabond in its piano part. There are also some instances of word painting (using the music to reflect the meaning of the words). For example, the second syllable of "below" in The Vagabond is sung on a relatively low note, a downward leap of a minor 7th from the note before it. Youth and Love has the words "and far on the level land" all on the same note, as well as a high, loud note for the word "cries" and a pianissimo low note that decrescendos for the word "gone."

Apart from that I don't really have much more analysis on this work. I think we're going to learn more about it in class this Thursday (wait... that's tomorrow), though, so maybe I can update this part then as well as flesh out (and re-organise) the stuff on Vaughan-Williams' life and compositional output. Until then, happy listening (and performing)!

20th Century Onwards- English Composers of the 20th Century

Previously I talked about some French composers, such as Debussy. Now it's time to cross the Channel and talk about some English composers, such as Elgar, Holst and Vaughan-Williams (or "V-dubs" as our music class affectionately calls him).

After England's long-standing reputation for being "the land without music" for many years after the death of Purcell (a Baroque-era composer), it was up to the current generation of English composers including Vaughan-Williams, Holst, Elgar and Tippett to create new music that was truly British. And just as the French composers liked asserting their "Frenchness," these English composers liked asserting their "Englishness," with their compositions rife with nostalgia for the English countryside and laced with influences from and references to folk music and music written by older composers such as Purcell and Parry. A lot of these up-and-coming British composers were also involved in the war in some way or another (well, it was a World War, so pretty much everyone got involved in some way regardless or whether they were actually fighting or not) and this often had an impact on their compositions.

Let's have a bit of a closer look at these British composers: who they were, what they wrote, and what inspired them. First up is Edward Elgar, who had a lower middle class background, had no formal education and was not always received well, but this didn't stop him from playing violin and teaching music (though he didn't enjoy the latter job). During WWI, he was a special constable and later joined the Hampstead Volunteer Reserve. He wrote many well-known compositions such as the Enigma variations, the Cello Concerto and his Pomp and Circumstance Marches. Elgar's patriotism is evident in some of his works, particularly the latter marches, the first of which became Land of Hope and Glory. He also wrote some choral music, such as The Dream of Gerontius, an oratorio that was sometimes not received well because it was too serious and heavy or, as one Irish Protestant put it, "stinks of incense." Overall, though, he was successful enough to land him honorary degrees from Oxford, Cambridge and Yale and receive a knighthood. Yes, I would say he was pretty successful.

Next up on my list is Frederick Delius, who was born in England but lived in France for 45 years where he befriended the artists Gaugin and Munch. Kinda like how Handel was German but lived in England for a while. Delius also studied in Leipzig in 1886, where he befriended Grieg. (You'll find that a lot of these musicians and artists tend to know each other.) His musical style included a bit of everything, incorporating elements of French Impressionism, German post-Romanticism and the English pastoral feel into his works. In fact, Delius was sometimes considered a "water-colourist of music" due to his use of French Impressionist elements. He also wrote a variety of orchestral and choral works, including a non-religious mass called the Mass of Life and a secular requiem commemorating the WWI war dead. He died in 1934 while blind and paralysed by syphilis. In fact, this was the same year that Elgar died. And Holst. Hmm. Now go home and make a conspiracy theory out of that. I challenge you.

Gustav Holst was originally called Gustav von Holst but he dropped the "von" during WWI in order to sound less German. He was a trombonist, music teacher and director of schools in London, as well as a friend of Vaughan-Williams who, like Vaughan-Williams, was strongly influenced by English folk song. His most famous work is The Planets suite: the theme of Jupiter became the patriotic hymn I Vow to Thee My Country, while Mars, the Bringer of War served to portray the horrors of WWI, during which Holst had volunteered for the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) in France. The Planets suite also influenced the musical scores of many film scores such as the scores of Star Wars and Harry Potter. As mentioned before, Holst died in 1934 after surgery for haemorrhagic gastritis (wow big words)- the same year that Elgar and Delius died.

Michael Tippett was a bit of a pacifist and was jailed for three months for refusing to fight in WWI. This didn't stop him from writing lots of English operas, cantatas and concertos, though. He also wrote an oratorio in three parts called A Child of Our Time about an incident involving a young Polish Jew who shot a diplomat.

Benjamin Britten was another very well-known English composer, though he wasn't just a composer: he also was a conductor and pianist, just like Rachmaninov. He was initially taught music by his mother before studying composition under Frank Bridge and attending the Royal College of Music. He wrote a wide variety of works: choral music, orchestral music, operas and songs. Many of his songs were for tenor voice because he was writing for his partner (yes, Britten was homosexual). Like Tippett, Britten was also a pacifist, and he was criticised for avoiding the call-up for WWII. (It also says in my notes here that he went to America between 1939 and 1942, so I'm guessing that that's how he avoided the call-up.) Back in England, Britten and his partner toured giving recitals, even performing for concentration camp survivors. The latter experience affected Britten for the rest of his life, but he never spoke about it until towards the end of his life. Britten wrote many well-loved works, such as the Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra and the War Requiem. Britten was awarded the Order of Merit in 1965, had heart surgery in 1973 and died three years later.

Next up is Vaughan-Williams, but I might talk about him in a different post, since this post seems to have dragged on for long enough. TTFN!

The Romantic Period (c. 1830-1900)- Rachmaninov and his Second Piano Concerto

I'm not normally much of a crammer, but I must admit that one thing that I do cram for is Music written exams, particularly those relating to Cultural and Historical Perspectives or whatever the fancy name for it is nowadays. Writing this post is essentially my method of trying to cram for my test tomorrow. Hopefully it works.

Rachmaninov (or Rachmaninoff, depending on what transliteration you have, but definitely not "Maraschino" as Google Chrome's dictionary seems to suggest- no, I'm not kidding, that's what it suggests as a correct spelling of "Rachmaninov") was a Russian pianist, composer, conductor and poster-child for hypnotherapy. (Wow, all those roles start with p- or c-.) He was influenced by some of the other Russian composers of his time, particularly Tchaikovsky and "The Russian Five," a group of nationalistic Russian composers consisting of Cesar Cui, Alexander Borodin, Mily Balakiref, Modest Mussorgsky and Nicolas Rimsky-Korsakoff. These composers were among several Russian composers who were attempting to compose in a more Russian nationalistic style by collecting and adopting the traditions of Russian folk music.

Rachmaninov, born in Semyonovo in north-west Russia in 1873, showed skill at the piano from a young age, and he entered the Moscow Conservatorium at age 12. He wrote a lot of piano music, including several piano concertos. His First Piano Concerto was written when he was just 18 and was a very accomplished work. The first performance of his First Symphony (not to be confused with the aforementioned First Piano Concerto), however, did not go down very well, partly because it was under-rehearsed. Nevertheless, this failure sent Rachmaninov into a depression that left him unable to compose for several years. Eventually, he received hypnotherapy from Dr. Nikolai Dahl, which helped him to recover and write his Second Piano Concerto, which proved to be a great success.

Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto is structured more or less like most other Romantic solo concertos (well, the first movement is, at least). The first movement of Classical solo concertos often had a double exposition, in which the themes were played by the orchestra in the first exposition and by the soloist in the second. Romantic solo concertos, on the other hand, preferred to introduce the soloist first for more dramatic effect, though the first movement often still stayed in sonata form. The other main difference between the first movement structures of the two concertos is that, in a Classical concerto, the movement would be rounded off soon after the soloist finishes the cadenza (virtuous solo bit, where the soloist gets to show off their skills), while in a Romantic concerto, the movement would carry on for a bit longer before finishing. Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto subverts the whole cadenza thing entirely, though, by simply not having a cadenza in the first movement at all. I suppose the whole movement is challenging enough for the pianist, so much so that a cadenza isn't all too necessary. That, or maybe Rachmaninov just thought that a cadenza wouldn't "fit," which is also fair enough.

Anyway. Analysis time. The work starts off in F minor for 8 bars (if you can really define a tonality with all of those accidentals changing) and a whole lot of "bell-like" chords. I remember reading or hearing somewhere that these "bell-like" chords hark back to Rachmaninov's involvement with the Church, though I'm not sure which Church exactly (I'm assuming the Russian Orthodox Church, just because he's Russian, but I could be totally wrong) and I can't remember where I read that. These chords are pretty big, covering a wide range, but Rachmaninov had a pretty big hand-span so he didn't need to roll them (though many pianists do have to). It crescendos gradually until the 8th bar where you hear the basic motif- A flat, F, G, C, or f, r, m, l in moveable doh, which is heard several other times throughout the work.

Now begins the first theme in C minor! This first theme can be divided into 2 sections, A and B. A goes from about 0:25 on the recording to 0:47, while B goes from 0:47 to 1:42. The soloist doesn't actually get to play the melody here, rather it plays a lot of broken chords while the strings and the clarinet (yay!) get the melody. (The clarinet only really gets the melody for part A, though. Aww.) After the first theme, there's a short transition passage from 1:42 to 1:58, featuring some stepwise descending chords in the strings and homophony (harmony built on block chords) reminiscent of Russian marching music. Now onto theme 2!

Theme 2 (1:58-3:39) is in E-flat Major, keeping with the tradition that sonata-form works with theme 1 in the minor key have theme 2 in the relative major key. Theme 2 is introduced by a "quasi-introduction ostinato figure" from the clarinets before the actual Theme 2 is introduced by the piano- yes, the piano's playing the melody this time!  I have written on my score that theme 2 in this movement is also the same as the 2nd theme of the 2nd movement, but when I listened to the second movement I didn't notice the similarities so I guess I'll have to listen again. Theme 2 features some "quasi-stretto" or staggered entries (you'll find that whoever wrote the analysis guide for 3AB music seems to like the word "quasi"), such as between the cello and piano, or later between the clarinet/oboe and piano, which give the music a polyphonic texture. Also, as the theme gets repeated, it becomes thicker, played first relatively simply and then in octaves with denser chords and a busier harmony built on triplets rather than quavers. Finally, Transition 2, in C minor, occurs between 3:39 and 4:20 before the development commences.

I don't really want to go into the development (4:20-5:57) into too much detail, or I'll bore you to death if I haven't already. There's little snippets of themes all over the place, including that basic motif that I introduced at the beginning (that Ab, F, G, C one, remember? It's played in an assortment of different keys throughout the work though), so perhaps all I can say is, have fun playing "Spot the Theme." Actually, I've come up with one more thing to say, or one more list of things to say, and that's a list of fancy terms to help guide your listening if you're that way inclined.

Retrograde: Playing something back-to-front. Sometimes a whole melody or melodic fragment can be played in reverse, or sometimes a rhythm might be reversed. For example, a minim then a crotchet would be played crotchet then minim.
Sequential passages: Passages in which sequences occur, a sequence being a melodic fragment repeated over and over at different pitches.
Diminution: A melodic fragment played using shorter note values. For example, minims might become crotchets and crotchets might become quavers. There's a good example of this in the recapitulation played by the horn.
Cross-rhythms: Conflicting rhythms like triplets and quavers played at the same time. Pianists just hate this. (Actually there's some awful ones in the piano throughout this work- I recall seeing one section with triplets in one hand and quintuplets in the other!)
Pedal notes: Long notes held over other changes in harmony. Sometimes they can hint at a key change- there's a G at the end of the development that hints at the change to C minor (G is the dominant of C minor and normally dominant chords are used to aid a modulation).

Also pay attention to the way that tension is created through extreme dynamic changes (piano goes from p to fff towards the end of the development) and through chromaticism.

The recapitulation begins at about 5:57. 1A is played by the strings while the piano plays an elaborate form of the basic motif. Soon the piano comes in with 1B, which, according to my notes, is the only time that the soloist plays theme 1. Next the horn comes in with an augmented version of Theme 2 in A-flat Major. Augmentation is the opposite of diminution (it's in the list of definitions above)- the melody is played with longer note values. Soon the clarinet gets to play the basic motif, except it sounds more peaceful. Bonus points if you spotted that before reading this.

As I said before, the piano doesn't get a cadenza in this movement. Instead, it just gets an arpeggiated figure using an extreme range of pitch where it would normally get a cadenza before having to play that awful (awful to play, that is, not to listen to) triplet/quintuplet thing.

The coda starts at 8:58. It's marked on my score as meno mosso, but it's still reasonably fast and will build up in speed and volume. After some sustained chords in the horns and some double stopping in the strings, the whole movement finishes with some fast ascending scales and a very abrupt perfect cadence in C minor!

20th Century Onwards- French composers, Impressionism, and other stuff

Recently we've been pummelled left, right and centre with a ton of Music Lit stuff to learn. This blog post is only part of my desperate efforts to sort through all this stuff. After this post there'll probably be something on Rachmaninov and his 2nd piano concerto, Ralph Vaughan-Williams and his Songs of Travel and maybe a post on lieder as well. We'll see. As it is, this blog post is only going to be a work in progress, since we still have way more stuff to get through. And to think that we only have six weeks left of school...?! Scary.

ANYWAY I need to stop procrastinating (there was like a full 24 hours before finishing writing the previous paragraph and starting this one) and get on with this blog post.

So. 20th Century. Comes pretty much right after the Romantic Period, if you can really define start and end dates for a period. Just as nearly every period can be argued to be both an extension of and a reaction against what the trends were in the previous period (e.g. forms like sonata form etc. carried on from the Classical Period to the Romantic Period, but different Romantic composers adapted the forms in different ways to express the emotions that they wanted to convey), so can the music of the 20th century be regarded as an extension to and a reaction against Romanticism.

Of course there's a whole array of different styles in the whole past century, but I'm only really going to mention a few in this post before focusing on impressionism. The 20th century saw a whole variety of scales that hadn't been used in Western music over the past few hundred years, like the whole-tone, pentatonic and modal scales. (I say "over the past few hundred years" because modal scales have their roots in medieval church modes. The other two I think weren't really a part of Western music until this point, but I'm not sure.) The 20th century also saw atonality- music that wasn't centred on any particular degree of the scale. Atonality is comprised of different systems of organisation like the "12-note system" in which music is created from "tone-rows" consisting of all 12 notes of the scale, and it's systems like this that inspired composers like Stravinsky and Messaien.

The nationalistic sentiments that were common during the Romantic period continued through to the 20th century. The USA, a young country at that time, was starting to acquire its own major composers who were composing distinctively "American" music, like Gershwin and Copland. Some of the major events of this period also inspired composers, particularly the two world wars. Ravel, for instance, was an ambulance driver during the WWI. If I remember correctly, he wrote his Piano Concerto for the Left Hand for a soldier who had lost his right hand during the war. Some of the major events reduced compositional output- for example, the Great Depression limited resources, so composers had to compose for smaller groups. Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia also severely limited the freedom of composers, so many composers from Germany and Russia had to flee in order to continue writing freely.

And now for one of the main subjects of this post: impressionism! Impressionism is another one of those things that is kind of a continuation of and a reaction to the previous movement. While Romantic-era music was often programmatic- that is, the music tells stories- Impressionist music simply conveys an image or a mood without getting into specifics like Romantic music did with different themes for different characters and whatnot. Impressionist music also follows fewer rules than Romantic music (i.e. it's not so concerned about parallel 5ths and 8ves and stuff)- it just does whatever it needs to in order to make sure the mood or image or whatever is being portrayed. Colour is also more important in Impressionist music than in Romantic music.

Impressionist music didn't spring out of nowhere- it was often inspired by Impressionist art or Symbolist poetry. Symbolist poetry uses a lot of symbols (hence the name) to convey objects rather than the object itself. Also, in symbolist poetry, the sounds that words make are just as important as the meanings of the words themselves. Impressionist art uses vague, hazy brush strokes and lines in order to convey a mood or an atmosphere of the place. Lots of impressionist art uses cooler colours like blues and greens.

One of the pioneers of Impressionist music was Claude Debussy, but if you ever time-travel and meet up with him, don't call him an Impressionist, since Debussy hated having such labels stuck on him. Still, though, it's often heralded that his Prelude à L'aprés-midi d'un Faune (I hope I got all the accents right there!) marked the start of 20th-century Impressionist music. It wasn't all that well-received to start off with, though- people thought that the orchestra was just tuning up when they heard it! This could be because it doesn't have a strong sense of meter as most music from previous eras did, and tends to flow in a wash of sound and colour- the musical equivalent of Impressionist art.

A bit more about Debussy: He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 10 and wowed/shocked his teachers with his non-adherence to musical rules. One of his teachers said something along the lines of, "it sounds nice, but it doesn't follow the rules!" (One of my fellow students complained that Debussy's music "didn't make sense" because Debussy's "crazy." When asked why he thought that Debussy's "crazy," he replied "because Debussy's music doesn't make sense." A bit of circular reasoning there...) He also won the Prix de Rome in 1884 with his cantata L'enfant prodigue. Ravel, another French composer often thought of as Debussy's "rival," never managed to win this prize despite entering 5 times.

Debussy believed that his work needed to be "flexible and adaptable to fantasies and dreams." He received inspiration from a variety of different sources, such as Symbolist poetry and the Javanese gamelan music that he heard during the 1889 Paris Exposition. He wrote music for orchestras, chamber ensembles and piano as well as possibly a myriad of other works that don't fall into those categories. I think he wrote ballet music but I'm not too sure.

Debussy was also very French. Apparently he walked out of the Paris premier of Mahler's Second Symphony because he felt that it was too foreign! (But duh, Mahler's German, shouldn't he have the right to write German music?! Unless Mahler's music didn't sound German, in which case maybe Debussy did have the right to protest. In fact, in my notes it says that Debussy and his friends thought that Mahler's Second Symphony was "too Viennese..."). Maybe it was this nationalistic sentiment (I seem to have been using that phrase a helluva lot in this post...) that drove him to compose in his own style unique to him and unique to his country: more delicate and gentle and stuff rather than all that heavy chromaticism and massive displays of emotion as was common in late Romantic German music.

Debussy's style was quite unique. He used many different scales such as whole tone, pentatonic and modal rather than the major/minor tonalities heavily favoured in previous eras. His music tends not to have a strong meter, but rather have a more floating, free quality to it. Harmonic progressions in his music tend not to have a very strong sense of "progression," and tend to be more a series of chords to be appreciated as they are (for example, no cadences or dissonances that need to be resolved). Tone colour was important to him, though, so he thought of the orchestra as individual instruments with unique tone colours to be utilised in many different ways, rather than as four families of instruments.

There's no better way to learn about a composer's music style than by listening to his or her music, though, so let's have a listen to one of Debussy's piano preludes, The Sunken Cathedral (or La Cathédrale engloutie- its original French title).

First things first- the piano piece really is about a sunken cathedral. Although Impressionist music tends not to be very programmatic (i.e. it doesn't strictly tell a story), this particular work does. Debussy does have a lot of other works that convey images or moods rather than stories, but I guess this isn't one of them.

The story is based off a Breton myth in which a cathedral near the Island of Ys rises up from beneath the water on a clear day. Throughout the work, church bells, choirs and waves are suggested through the open harmonies and low rippling figures in the bass line.

The harmony throughout the beginning is very open, with parallel 5ths and 8ves- a fine example of Debussy breaking the standard rules of harmony. The open 5ths and 8ves can suggest organum- one of the earliest attempts to create harmonies, which involved simply adding a line a 5th or an 8ve above or below an original line to create harmony. A wide range is also used, making the chords seem even more open. Additionally, the low notes give the sense of something submerged deep beneath the waves. The dynamic marking here is pianissimo, as the cathedral is still muffled by the water.

This work is another of Debussy's where there is no clear sense of meter, giving a sense of timelessness and I guess an infinite, mystical quality. (I'm not sure if you can use the word "infinite" like that, but whatever.) This is done through the very slow tempo, the open chords that don't resolve to give a strong accent anywhere, and rhythms that cross over bar lines (syncopation).

One way in which Debussy has attempted to convey the story of the Sunken Cathedral is through his use of very specific instructions in French (carrying on from the Romantic tradition of writing instructions in one's native tongue). The piano score has very specific instructions such as "Peu à peu sortant de la brume" (gradually emerging from the haze), "sonore sans dureté" (sonorous without hardness) and "flottant et sourd" (floating and muffled).

When the cathedral is still just emerging from the haze, the bass line changes to a flowing triplet rhythm signifying the waves. There are several series of fairly thick ascending chords, which can be interpreted as the cathedral rising from the waves. The thickness of the chords could very well be the church choirs which are now starting to become audible. Soon, the instruction "augmentez progressivement" (progressively getting louder) is given, as the cathedral is now more above the water and thus its sounds are more readily heard. More open chords are heard, signifying church bells, and then more thick chords, which are "sonorous without hardness" are heard. These chords are fortissimo, a large contrast to the pianissimo at the beginning of the work. Now, the cathedral is completely above the water, and the choirs can be heard loud and strong.

By the way, I have in my notes a fancy little term for this use of parallel diatonic chords. Apparently, it's called "planing."

More of these chords are heard, still at fortissimo, until it decrescendos back down to piano, as the cathedral is now beginning to sink back underwater and the choirs and bells are becoming more muffled again. Further on, there are some parallel dominant 7ths, none of which resolve to a tonic chord of any kind. Towards the end, more rippling figures are heard as a sort of ostinato, "comme un echo de la phrase entendue précedemment" (like an echo of the preceding phrase), once again signifying the waves.

Other stuff to notice: There's a fair few pedal notes. Yay. Tonality-wise, even though Debussy doesn't often use major/minor tonalities, there are some sections of this work which could be classed as B Major, but then again there's a whole bunch of other sections which could be considered pentatonic, mixolydian, whole-tone or phrygian. If this is your cup of tea then take a look at this harmonic analysis of The Sunken Cathedral here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTwvtwlSh5U

That's pretty much it from me for now on The Sunken Cathedral. Now to briefly talk about some other stuff!

The Sunken Cathedral is just one piano prelude of Debussy's. Debussy wrote two books of piano preludes. The preludes either have ambiguous titles (e.g. "Voiles," which means "sails" or "veils") or descriptive titles like "The Girl with the Flaxen Hair." In some editions of his books, the titles are placed at the end. The idea is that you listen and work out an image and a meaning for yourself, and then find out what Debussy really intended. Aside from piano music, Debussy also wrote lots of music for different combinations of instruments, like his orchestral work "La Mer" (the sea). A lot of Debussy's works involve the ocean or water in some form or another.

Now let's have a look at some other French composers, just for comparison! (And I've just realised that Debussy's The Sunken Cathedral kind of got delegated to the position of "the other stuff" in the title of this blog post. Sorry, Debussy.)

Okay, well, first of all I should probably talk about Ravel, since Ravel often gets compared to Debussy. Ravel and Debussy often influenced each other. Ravel's inspiration came from Javanese gamelan music (which also inspired Debussy), Russian music, and the music of some German composers like Wagner. He was also influenced by poetry and by world events such as WWI. Another influence on his music was the death of his mother.

Ravel entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 14 and graduated in 1985. Two years later, he studied composition with Gabriel Fauré. He was a member of the artistic circle "Les Apaches." He wrote a variety of compositions, but is probably best known for his work Bolero, which includes a rather repetitive but catchy snare drum pattern. Ravel was often known for his orchestration, and often had instruments' tone colour in mind- just like Debussy, in a way. However, unlike Debussy, he wrote works that were sometimes considered "Neo-Classical" due to the presence of firm structures and clear melodic contour reminiscent of the Classical period- a far cry from Debussy's freer structure and floating melodies.

Fauré, Ravel's teacher in 1987, became a boarder at the Ecole Niedermeyer at age 9, where he learned church music, organ, piano, harmony, counterpoint and literature, and graduated with awards in almost every subject. He took on various organist positions as well as taught music. He formed the Société Nationale de Musique with his friends. Apparently a lot of his works were premiered there too. In 1986, Fauré became the composition professor at the Paris Conservatoire, and in 1905 became the director of the Conservatory. Fauré wasn't as well-known for his orchestration as Debussy and Ravel, but that certainly didn't stop him from composing lots of music. One of my favourites is his Pavane.

Satie was a pretty crazy guy. He did all kinds of weird things like buy 12 identical velvet suits just for the hell of it and put his umbrella under his coat if it was raining because he didn't want his umbrella to get wet. He wrote a lot of music with weird titles, like "Three Flabby Preludes for a Dog" and "Three Preludes in the Shape of a Pear." His music also had a bunch of bizarre instructions as well- apparently the former work had instructions in "Dog Latin" or something like that. One of his most famous works is his Gymnopédie No. 1.

Poulenc composed an awesome sonata for clarinet and piano. He was the leading member of the group "Les Six," a group of composers who aimed to turn music away from impressionism and intellectualism. He once said that his music was not to be analysed, but to be enjoyed. After his friend passed away, he started composing more sacred music, like his Gloria.

That's it from me- it's late-ish now (well, late for me anyway) and I have to touch up my Lit essay a bit and then go to sleep since I have orchestra tomorrow morning and then the Athletics Carnival which I'll go to if it's not raining. (I can't really afford to get too sick in such a vital term.) Good night, or good morning/afternoon, depending on what time of day it is when you're reading this.