CHAPTER 7 – An Eclectic Method for Sound, Form and Reference

SUMMARY

This chapter can almost serve as the cliff notes for Ferrara’s previous chapters in his book. We can finally see a summarized version of Ferrara’s eloquent and intricate, yet sometimes confusing lingo. This chapter actually really helped me to fully understand the topics and themes of Ferrara’s previous chapters. He describes the ten steps of the Eclectic Method:

Step One: Always use a framework, or historical context when analyzing a piece. Use dates, historical and cultural information surrounding those dates, social issues, and more.

Step Two: Listen to the piece with an open and free mind. Throw out any preferences or preconceptions, and fully grasp the piece with tolerance and open-mindedness.

Step Three: Observe the structural format of the piece, or syntax. This helps for one to further understand the full complexity of a piece.

Step Four: Referred to as sound-in-time, the listener must observe how he or she feels about the actual sound of the piece, not the structure or syntax.

Step Five: Referred to as a musical or textual representation, the listener can see what parts of a piece actually represent. Certain elements of the composition, syntax, or voicing can stand for certain themes, emotions or feelings. Each unique part of a piece serves to evoke a certain idea or theme.

Step Six: Referred to as virtual feeling, the listener strictly follows syntax and sound-in-time to see what feelings emerge from the piece.

Step Seven: The listener must fully explore the history, culture, society, religious contexts, etc. in which the piece was composed/written.

Step Eight: Go back to step two and repeat: perform another open listen, this time trying in the new information one has gathered. Basically, connect all the dots and listen again.

Step Nine: Referred to as a Performance Guide, this step allows for one to aid a performer with the overall comprehension of the piece. Since one has studied the in’s and out’s of the piece and its historical context, one can impart this knowledge on a performer to help improve the overall quality and feeling of the performance.

Step Ten: The Meta Critique! Basically, what are the strong points and weak points of the analysis presented? This wraps it up!



REACTION

Finally, a simplified system that I can understand! I did a little test to see if this ‘Eclectic Method’ really worked. I used both a classical piece and a new-age hip-hop track. Before listening, I thought about the historical and cultural contexts of both pieces. After an open-minded listening session (with an attempt to fully throw out all biases), I broke down the syntax of both pieces. I then went a little deeper, discussing what emotions and feelings were being evoked from different parts of the songs. After another listen to the tracks, I jotted down some notes to see if I had gained insight, knowledge and understanding about both tracks. Indeed, I found that this logical and methodological system really helped me to immerse myself within the music, whether it was classical or hip-hop. This system is fool-proof – it works on any genre of music! I find that very amazing. Kudos to Dr. Ferrara for summarizing this into a great chapter that we can all clearly understand.