For this listening assignment I chose to listen to the kings singers singing Thomas Weelkes As Vesta was from Latmos hill descending. By listening to this piece on a repeated loop I noticed a number of things I may not have caught only listening to the piece once through. The main difference I noticed in listening to the piece repeatedly was the relationship between the text and the music. In a piece like this full of polyphony with lots of different moving parts I find it is often difficult to understand all the text however listening to the piece over and over allowed me to surmount this obstacle. It allowed me to understand the relationship to the text in a much deeper way. Wilkes love to have the music imitate the words, on words like ‘mingled’ there is heavy use of all voices moving in all sorts of directions. On the phrase ‘all alone’ Wilkes writes only a single high voice giving a sense of isolation. Similarily in the phrase ‘running down’ there is a flow of voices singing quick descending phrases and on the word ‘ascending’ the voices have intertwineing lines moving upwards in pitch. Another difference I noticed in listening to the piece on repeat was that I was able to pick apart the different voices and follow their vocal line. Similarly to the text it is often difficult to follow one vocal line in a pice where they intermingle so frequently. Repeated listening allowed me to hear the piece enough times that I could follow along with the different vocal lines which gave me a fuller understanding of the harmony and texture of the piece. Finally this piece is relatively short so listen I was able to sing along to a few of the parts which made it interesting and a fun ear training expertise.
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