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!