Context and Subtext

Scale: Part 1

Music and Poetry

Our current route into the land of scales takes poetry as a starting point to explore related musical aspects.

You’ll find four passages of English poetry below, ranging in length from 1 line to 29 lines.

If this ends up being the most poetry you’ll have read in one sitting, please accept my sincerest congratulations.

Each passage has a markedly different structure and intended mood, but one thing they all have in common is the word “fear.” This is by design, and the word has been marked in bold in each passage.

Same shape, different context

To make the most of the process, I’d recommend following these steps:

1. Just read the passage straight through the first time.

2. On the second read-through, slow down, and observe what you feel and think.

3. Take a breath. If there was something that stood out in the passage, think about why it felt that way.

Ask yourself these questions for each passage:

1. What was the most memorable aspect of the passage and why?

2. What is the feeling you associate with the entire passage?

3. How did the context of the passage change how you perceived the word “fear”?

The 4 Passages

• Here’s the shortest passage, expressive of a somewhat tender moment:

  Her breath like ocean tide, washed away my fears.

• The next one sounds vaguely motivational:

  He cast away his thorns and tears,

  And rose above the rage and fear.

• In contrast, the third one is particularly gloomy:

  Beneath the fiery sun,

  The parchment sky withered dry our fearful lives,

  As flies might fry on a white-hot surface.

  Beneath the blue expanse,

  The crumbling air held still its breath

  As famine fed the earth with death.

• The fourth one is long and just plain silly:

  I slipped out like butter,

  A master among thieves,

  Blending with the crowd

  Outside for anonymity.

  But luck had planted a thorn, it seems.

  As I crossed the crowded street,

  I felt a fearful release —

  My belt came unfastened,

  And my pants dropped to my knees.

  Forgetting place and time,

  I dropped my bags of stolen goods

  And yanked my trousers to the sky.

  No one had noticed the lapse. Phew!

  That is, no one except

  The policeman right behind me.

  This young gentleman, entirely

  Unaware of the recent robbery,

  Was nevertheless wary of

  What seemed like a pervert taking off

  His clothes in steaming traffic.

  He yelled, ‘Hands where I can see them!’

  My hands and pants went their two ways…

  As a breeze gently caressed my legs,

  And I met the policeman’s stern gaze

  I knew that I’d be charged with theft

  On that inauspicious day.

  And yet, a question bothered me:

  On the charge of indecency,

  Was the policeman an accessory?

A Detour at the Very Start

This post is a bit different, to say the least.

The initial version I had planned looked fundamentally different from what you’ve just read.

My earlier thought process went the conventional route: first introduce the elements of scales (pitches), and then group them into sets (scales) in a neat and logical way.

It all made sense. But it also felt like someone had suffocated the colour out of music in the process.

Of course, that someone was me, so I felt compelled to reinvigorate it the best I could. That meant starting afresh.

Instead of a bottom-up approach, I thought it’d be fun to try something more top-down, or some variant of it like sideways-top-down-round-top.

The goal is the same: harnessing the power of scales to understand the music that we hear.

We’re just taking a detour to get there — a detour right at the beginning. ;)

Why Poetry?

Well, simple answer: I love writing poetry and have a deep desire to share some of its striking connections with music.

Slightly longer answer:

The above passages illustrate the relationship between two layers— words and surrounding context.

This is something that happens in music all the time. One layer of a piece of music can affect the layers contained within it, or even the layers containing it.

Musical Meaning

Using these poetry examples as references, we’ll soon see how similar layer relationships might exist in music.

More specifically, we’ll see how a pitch (or a group of pitches) can have a different “meaning” relative to the surrounding musical context.

Scales offer one way of understanding this relationship between a pitch and its surrounding context.

Now might be a good time to listen to one of the melodies we’ll be using as an example later in the series:

What’s Next?

We’ll take a closer look at musical “meaning.”

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