In Unit 1, we summed up the aims of this course with the following quotes from Robert Schumann’s Advice to Young Musicians.
*“A perfect musician should be able to picture a piece, at first hearing…as though the score were visible.”
“You must get to the point that you can hear music from the page.”*
Schumann’s ideal for musicianship was that anyone aspiring to the profession ought to be able to transcribe melodies and harmonies. Over the past fifteen weeks, we have studied this process.
A Two-Way Street
Remember that success in ear training and sight singing lies in understanding what certain musical concepts look like and sound like – and moreover, knowing how to match the visual and the auditory without difficulty.
We have learned over the course of the semester that this is not as daunting as it sounds. Melodic and harmonic dictations become much easier when you train your ear to identify patterns, then use the logic of music theory to commit them to the page.
To this end, when you hear a melodic dictation, the first pattern to listen for is the structure of the phrase. Are we hearing period structure, or sentence structure? Please review the following principles:
Sentence (8 measures)
Period (8 measures)