Musical Meaning Blog - Maddie Anderson

 Maddie Anderson

Musical Meaning Blog, Module 6 

November 20, 2022 

The Banshee - Henry Cowell

    I chose to analyze the piece titled “The Banshee”, by Henry Cowell. This piece relates to the module because I believe it is a great example of experimentalism in western art music tradition. When first listening to this piece, I was very much so taken by surprise. It looks like the musician is simply sitting at the piano to play a normal piano piece, however that is not what this piece of music consists of. All of the unique aspects of this piece is what influenced me to pick it to relate to our module of experimentalism. This piece by Henry Cowell definitely explored new areas of western music after composing “The Banshee”. This piece was the very first piano piece ever created that does not utilize the keyboard of the piano, and rather uses the strings within the instrument by manual manipulation. I think that the meaning of this piece was to simply discover new and different ways to compose music with instruments that already exist. This was very creative of Henry Cowell because he was able to push so many musical boundaries, without making new instruments, and instead just finding ways to reinvent techniques of playing the piano. Furthermore, the actual meaning behind this piece, according to Cowell, follows a story consisting of a fairy coming down to Earth during the time of a death, and taking a soul. When reading about the meaning of this piece, I was taken by surprise by the very specific story Henry Cowell has for this piece. The meaning that Cowell described for this piece is linked to the actual sound in many ways. In my opinion, the unique and different sounds being produced by the piano in this piece, can represent the strange meaning behind the piece. The noise produced by scraping the piano strings, which makes a shriek sound, can also be related back to the meaning of this piece. The unpleasant sound can relate to the more sinister meaning. 

Animals - Martin Garrix 

    I chose to analyze the piece titled “Animals” by Martin Garrix because when I thought of modern day examples of experimentalism in music, I thought of this piece. Martin Garrix is a DJ, who released this piece in 2014. When I recall hearing this piece for the first couple times after it was released, I remember thinking about how different it was from anything else on the radio and how unique it was. This piece is fully electronic and at the time was definitely pushing musical boundaries. I think that the lack of lyrics in this piece is part of what made it so unique and different at the time. Now, there are fully electronic songs are super common and always playing on the radio, however, I often think about how this was the first electronic song I remember hearing on the radio and in media, several years ago and how weird it was for the piece to not contain any lyrics. However, I do think there is something very cool about pieces that do not contain lyrics because the listener is forced to find meaning in the piece in the song itself, rather than the lyrics like any other piece. The meaning behind this piece is difficult to understand or interpret because there are no lyrics in it, however, I do believe that the title, “Animals”, can be related to how the tempo and melody of this piece varies. It is an extremely fluid song, with a very large range, which in my opinion, can be an explanation to why it was given this title because animals, just like this piece, are very unpredictable. In one moment, the piece has a very quick tempo with a certain melody, and then a few seconds later it can have a completely different melody with a differing tempo as well.