Great job with your melodies and modulations last week. I can already hear a lot more bravery and improvement in the things you are sharing with the class.

Your assignment this week is to take that melody that you wrote and to modify it in one or more of the ways we discussed.

Melodic transformation changes one or more of the notes in your melody, usually by adding a sharp or flat, to give a bit of a different shape or harmonic flavor to the melody, but without fundamentally changing it. You still want your original melody to be recognizable.

Rhythmic displacement moves the melody forward or backward by a little bit, so it starts earlier or later. You might try moving it forward or backward by a quarter or eighth note to see how that changes things.

Changing the time signature of your melody can put the stronger notes on different beats, which may change the feel of your melody entirely.

A couple of others that we didn’t discuss in class but that could be fun to try:

Diminution is changing the rhythm of your melody to smaller note values. You could go from using quarter notes to eighth notes, for example.

Augmentation is changing the rhythm of your melody to longer note values. Quarter notes to half notes, for example. Or perhaps you change the melody to whole notes and put it in the bass, while a different countermelody with smaller note values is in the treble line.

Please send me your completed compositions (from both weeks, in case you hadn’t sent last week’s already) via email by Thursday, October 17th at 7:00 p.m.

My musical happy moment this week comes with a sad note. American mezzo soprano Jessye Norman died last week at the age of 74. She was a giant and a pioneer in the operatic world, and her voice is simply stunning. She was born in Georgia to parents who were amateur musicians, and after school she established her career in Europe, debuting in Berlin in 1969. She did not maker her debut at the New York Metropolitan Opera for another 15 years, but was established as one of the Met’s most illustrious singers. She was in high demand as a soloist and recording artist. She suffered a spinal cord injury in 2015 that ended her career and limited her public appearances, and ultimately led to her death through complications. This recording of “Give Me Jesus” from 1990 was part of a concert series and a recording that she did of spirituals at that time. It’s a slow song, but believe me, the caliber of singing she is accomplishing here is phenomenal. What she is doing in this song is very, very hard. This aria, When I am Laid in Earth by Henry Purcell from Dido and Aeneas, is forever etched in my mind. Whenever I think of this aria, her voice is the one I hear. As a compositional note, the bass line is an ostinato, a form of ground bass. May she rest in peace.