Assignment Task: Concert Report Instructions
Choose a recital or concert to watch on D2L. You must watch the concert in its entirety. Some links have the second part in the description; recitals must be at least 50 minutes long. You may choose to skip some pieces only if the recital is longer than an hour, but you must watch at least 50 minutes of it.
Cheating
You are expected to practice the highest possible standards of academic integrity. Any deviation from this expectation will result in a minimum academic penalty of your failing the assignment and will result in additional disciplinary measures including referring you to the Office of Academic Integrity. Violations of the University's Honor Code include, but are not limited to improper citation of sources, using another student's work, submitting a concert report for a concert you did not actually attend in full, and any other form of academic misrepresentation.
Using any information from any source without a citation is plagiarism and will be reported and penalized as such. If you consult outside sources (including program notes) and use them in your report, you must include citations. This includes program notes of the concert, our textbook, Wikipedia, online articles, library sources, etc. Any citation format (MLA, Turabian, etc) is acceptable. You may include a word cited section in your conclusion section and it will not penalize your word count.
Grading
These assignments are graded on completeness and content. Thus, if you do not address a question or engage it seriously, you lose points. Your musical opinions, positive or negative, are completely valid, but should be expressed thoughtfully and in a professional tone. Comments such as "the concert was pretty legit" or "the soloist was hot" are inappropriate. Write in complete and legible sentences, proofread for correct grammar. Utilize musical vocabulary in describing each work.
The Concert Report:
Question 1: State the event you attended. Describe your expectations for the concert. Briefly describe the concert venue, atmosphere, and any other environmental factors that impressed upon you. Make sure to discuss the where, when, what you saw, and the list of the pieces that are on the program with their corresponding composers.
This should be no more than 250 words (exception will be made if there are many pieces on a program).
Question 2: Discuss your observations for the first piece on the program and the last piece on the program. If any of those pieces involve movements, you must discuss each individual movement as well. You must use specific musical terminology as we have studied in the elements of music section of the class.
Keep in mind the following elements of music and categories:
Melody (contour: conjunct, disjunct, range: wide, narrow), Harmony (dissonant vs. consonant), Texture (monophonic, homophonic, polyphonic), Dynamics (pianissimo, piano, mezzo piano, mezzo forte, fortissimo), Changes of Dynamics (crescendo, diminuendo), Tempo (adagio, andante, moderato, allegro, vivace, presto), Change of Tempo (accelerando, ritardando), Instrumentation (what performance forces are used?), Text setting (syllabic, neumatic, melismatic- text setting must have text, cannot use this category for instrumental music). Etc.
Word count must be within 350 - 600 words. No More, No Less.
More helpful questions that might help guide your writing:
What musical period is this piece from (check the composer's dates)? (Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, late Romantic, 20th century, etc.)
What musical elements in this piece justify the musical period? (instrumentation, use of dynamics, tempo, genre, etc.)
What dramatic effects does the piece have? What specific musical elements achieve that?
Make sure you mention specific musical vocabulary instead of saying that the piece got faster, slower, higher, lower, etc.
Question 3: Conclude your report with your review of the experience. What is something you enjoyed about the performance or did not enjoy?
Minimum 50 words, maximum 250 words.
You may include a work cited section here as well which will not be counted towards the word count.