In this first lecture of the term, we looked at the idea of prosody in music. In (fairly) simple terms, prosody is when a songwriter/composer uses musical techniques in order to express certain feelings or emotions, or even hint at a storyline through the music. Prosody can be implemented in a variety of different ways, and has been throughout the history of music.
For example, here is a recording of “Liebesleid” (translating to Love’s Sorrow) which was originally a piece written for violin by Fritz Kreisler in 1905, and was arranged for piano by Sergei Rachmaninoff:
Although you may have to listen to the entire recording in order to get a sense of the prosody being presented (as most romantic era classical pieces require), there are some obvious links to the title of the piece that are scattered throughout. One example is at the 2:35 timestamp, where you can hear a descending line accompanied by a crescendo which crashes into a rather loud, yet brief section of the piece before slowing back down. If this doesn’t indicate to the listener of the sorrow that the composer is intending to convey, then I can’t think of a better way (at least on a single piano with a single musician).
Prosody Song Task:
We were tasked with writing a short song with prosody in mind, so I formed a group with Saffron (bass) Zara (vocals) and Kara (guitar), with myself on the keyboard. I started off the song with a simple 4 chord progression:
As you can see, this chord progression led to the discuss of ideas behind how we would present prosody. Some themes were discussed, and the general idea ended up being a sense of lost in thought whilst sitting in a coffee shop with rainfall outside (very specific). From this, Zara then wrote a verse of lyrics, and the song progress so far can be heard in the video above.
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