Moby Dick seemed combinedly possessed by all the angels that fell from heaven. The birds! - the birds! They mark the spot ... The whale, the whale! Up helm, up helm! Oh, all ye sweet powers of air, now hug me close ... He turns to meet us ... My God, stand by me now!
2 Comments
Daniela Velazquez
3/26/2020 01:33:53 pm
This movement does a great job of telling the story of the final battle by using many forms of different musical elements. For example in the beginning the tempo marking is marked “Aggressively” and begins with heavy percussion which give off a sense of a great battle about to begin. There are are also many different sections of the piece that represent different moments in the battle. For example the beginning to A feels like the moment where the sailors see Moby Dick as he prepares for battle. D to G feels like the moment Moby Dick begins to approach the ship and sets a sense of fear in the listener. At measure 57 it sounds like Moby Dick struck his first hit and from 58 to 70 sounds like the sailors are in shock and all they can hear and sense is Moby Dick and the danger he posses. The music helps to aid this effect by having the flutes cascade their notes downward but with lots of dissonance. I to 103 feels like Ahab preparing to strike back and striking at Moby Dick. The music keeps this up with the snare in percussion that seems to be imitating horses running into battle. 104 to N sounds like birds circling the ship trying to aid Moby Dick as he prepares to strike again. Upper woodwinds give this feel by imitating the sound of angry birds. N to O feels like Moby Dick is going in for the last blow and O sounds like the arrival of Moby Dick clashing with the ship and claiming victory. Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe that O resolves on a C major chord or some type of power chord. Then O to the end sounds like Moby Dick riding into the sunset after a big battle. The major chords and runs in the woodwinds give the song a final sense of victory. In my beliefs, I believe Moby Dick won at the end just like how he won in the book. Overall I think McBeth did a fantastic job of painting the final battle with this movement.
Elizabeth Morales
3/26/2020 02:46:06 pm
This movement tells the story of the final battle by staring suspenseful. In measure 6 and 11 they move to a more mysterious and alarming sound. Everything just keeps leading to more suspense up to H. It's mysterious again. This keeps happening throughout the whole movement until the end. Where it has tension that leads to a resolution. Leave a Reply. |
Of Sailors and Whales BLOG PROJECTEach Movement of Of Sailors and Whales is a musical description of one of the main characters in the book Moby Dick. What I would like us to do is to learn about each character and then try to make connections between what we know about the character and what the composer, Francis McBeth, wrote in the piece. ArchivesCategories |
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