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The Firebird

We played this when I was in High School. I can't hear the Finale without thinking about Jeanette and her beautiful French Horn... I also can't think about the Berceuse without thinking about rocking slowly back and forth... LOL!!! Man... good times... :-)

My kids and I were having a discussion about the devil's triad - or the tritone - last night on our way back from tithing settlement. I'm not sure how or why it came up. But I mentioned Stravinsky and his masterful use of this form in the Firebird Suite. The Dans Infernal in particular is amazing.

Makes me wish I could still play somewhere, somehow... with all my copious free time... LOL!

The video is from Disney's Fantasia 2000. It's very lovely and fits the music exactly - at least, it's what I always pictured in my mind when we played it...




Another example of the triad is found in the song "Maria" from West Side Story. When Tony sings "Ma-ri-a, I just met a girl named Ma-ri-a"... the first note is the root (1) of the chord, while the "-ri-" is a diminished 5th which resolves into the major 5th. This creates the tension that is desired, so that when the "-a" is reached it feels as though you've been through the tension in the poor man's heart and come to a final and beautiful resolution...



I was singing this at the top of my lungs last night, much to the chagrin of my son, who not only thinks I'm tone-deaf, but also was trying to get done with his homework... Poor lad! HA!

Comments

Bill Cobabe said…
Ah, now I remember how the conversation got started: Ammon said I was whistling out of tune! HA! I told him - yeah, right! This coming from YOU!! LOL!

But Elise asked about how one can be out of tune. We talked about how there are two kinds of "out of tune" - one meaning that the pitch, which should be exactly the same, is off slightly (the frequency of the sound is not the same), while the other is that the chord one is playing is dissonant. I mentioned that in western music, the chord is usually expressed as the 1-3-5. But occasionally there is intentional dissonance introduced to cause interest, drama, or tension, leading to ultimate resolution and release. The devil's triad is 1-3-(flat)5, thus creating tension: our ears just don't like to hear that kind of sound together like that...

Anyway, interesting conversation...
December 15, 2010 at 6:51 AM
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