The Anatomy of Melody: Exploring the Single Line of Song.The Anatomy of Melody: Exploring the Single Line of Song, by Alice Parker Alice Parker (b. December 17, 1925, Boston, Massachusetts) is an American composer, arranger and conductor. Many of her arrangements were done in cooperation with Robert Shaw. External links
Alice Parker is an acclaimed vocal music expert, with more than 600 published original works, arrangements and books, plus 14 record albums and four videos. After 50 years as a teacher, conductor, clinician and composer, she offers this fifth book that provides a thorough approach to analyzing, performing, listening, composing and appreciating music based on a single line: melody. It would be an excellent resource or even a basic textbook for composition, appreciation, music education and general music classes. Her beliefs about the importance and supremacy of melody are attributed to her life-long experiences and to working with Robert Shaw Robert Shaw may refer to:
This thought-provoking book is organized in eight parts with 20 chapters. Each chapter ends with a short section entitled "Reflections," with instructions for some sort of musical involvement by the reader and/or questions to be answered, the purposes of which are to engage the reader in experimentation and self-discovery. Parker delivers her subject matter in the clearest terms, proceeding logically from one point to the next, and often resorting to imagery and metaphors, of which she is a master: "Think the image of the whip: the gathering of energy as the body prepares for the 'snap' (rather like lightning)...." On the whole Parker exhibits thorough knowledge of musical concepts, and she often writes with refreshing wit. It is curious, however, that in a discussion of scales she says an electronic tuner An Electronic tuner is a device used by musicians to tune instruments. A musician plays a note, and a display (a needle, an LCD simulated needle, LED lights, or in older models, a spinning translucent disk illuminated by a strobe light--the tuning of a sample note is determined by has 100 cents between C and D. The term cents, as employed in a system devised by Alexander Ellis in the 19th century, is used to measure the size of an interval between two pitches in equal temperament equal temperament: see tuning systems. . Each half step is equal to 100 cents, thereby resulting in 1200 cents for the 12 half steps comprising an octave. C to D, consisting of two half steps, is then 200 cents, not 100. This error is most likely a misstatement mis·state tr.v. mis·stat·ed, mis·stat·ing, mis·states To state wrongly or falsely. mis·state  ment n. .
Many folk songs of various countries and cultures and well-chosen melodies of her own and other great composers such as J. S. Bach, W. A. Mozart, Beethoven, R. Schumann, Vaughn Williams and Gershwin, are used to illustrate salient points. These enhance the overall appeal of the book. Reviewed by Charles W. Smith, NCTM NCTM National Council of Teachers of Mathematics NCTM Nationally Certified Teacher of Music NCTM North Carolina Transportation Museum NCTM National Capital Trolley Museum NCTM Nationally Certified in Therapeutic Massage , Bowling Green, Kentucky Bowling Green is the fourth-most populous city in the U.S. state of Kentucky after Louisville, Lexington and Owensboro, with an estimated "population" in 2006 of 53,112. It is the county seat of Warren County and the principal city of and is included in the Bowling Green, Kentucky |
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