Ruijun Liu

Friday 12:30PM Emma

Paper #3
I will compare mystery piece 1 with two songs from differnent time period. One is
Spring from The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi in Baroque era. Another piece is
Emperor String Quartet by Joseph Haydn in Classical era. I think the umfamiliar piece 1
is in
Baroque era and the genre is concerto. I will compare these songs in different musical elements,
such as timbre, rhythm, movement, etc.
In Baroque era, composers usually wrote music for church and court. Music is often
performed in public theaters. There are several muscial characteristics during Baroque era. The
music ususally has stronger beats and clear meters and it usually has both major and minor
tonalities. The texture are polyphony and homophony.
For mystery piece 1 is the archetype of concerto genre music in Baroque era. In this
mystery music, it is an instrumental music. Most of instruments in this music are strings and
woodwind instruments. The meter is duple meter which includes major and minor tonalities. The
tempo is fast. It has three movements which are fast, slow, and fast. This song is quite similar
to the song Spring from The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi. I will talk about it in the
following paragraph.
Spring from The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi is also the Baroque
instumental
music. Antonio Vivaldi is an Italian violinst. He wrote over 500 concertos. Concerto usually has
soloist or small group accompanied by orchestra and it has three movements. The medium of

Spring is solo violin and orestra. It has ritornello form which is recurring instrumental section.
It
also has three movements which are fast, slow and then fast. It has both major and minor
tonalities. The tempo is also fast. This music depicts images of spring.
In Classical era, musical ideas are usually used as musical compositions. The changing
socioeconomy and rising middle class provided the basis for more active music participation and
pubic performances. There are several muscial characteristics in Classical era. Music usually has
homophonic texture and rhythmic variety. The pieces have longer and muti-movement forms. I
will talk about one of the Classical music, which differs from the mystery piece 1.
Emperor String Quartet by Joseph Haydn in Classical era is the last song I am
going to
talk about. The genre of this music is string quartet. Joseph Haydn was an Austrian composer and
he wrote music for public concerts. He worked for royal esterhazy family for most of his career.
String quartet is one of his best known works. The medium of this music is string quartet which
has 2 violins, viola and cello. The form equals to its theme and it has four variations which are A
AAA. The tempo is adagio which is slow and it has four movements which are fast, slow,
triple meter and then fast.
Mystery music 1 is the Baroque instumental music which is similar to the Spring
from
The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi in Baroque era in tempo and movement. It is different
from Emperor String Quartet by Joseph Haydn in Classical era which has four
movement and
slow tempo.