Examples of Both Musical Cultures

 

Celtic Music



 

 

Dulaman by Celtic Woman

 

Dulaman song has leading female vocals with homophonic instrumental accompaniment and male background singers repeating "dulaman" in a chant-like fashion.  The song is in a major key and has vocables as well as wide ranged melodic intervals.  The medium is one female voice, multiple male voices, a recorder, wind chimes, hand-held drums, a djenbe, a string section including violins, cellos, and fiddles, and a harp.  The form shifts from the men chanting while the recorder is playing a melody (A) to the female soloist singing verses with the men chanting in the back (B) to the chorus (C); the diagram would look similar to ABABCBCBCBC. 

 

 

Teir Abhaile Riu by Celtic Woman
 

The song begins with a violin and soft drums soon followed by the entrance of a solo female singer.  Not long after, she is joined by another voice singing homophonic harmony a major third above the melody.  The melody has many large leaps and drops.  The verses are in English, but the chorus shifts to a Gaelic language creating macaronic lyrics.  Throughout the song, drums, violins, and a harp is played.  The form shifts from the instrumental violin melody (A) to a verse (B) then to a chorus (C).  The song repeats ABC three times until the end when the A immediately leads into C repeating twice.  On the third and fourth A section of violin melody, the men come in and chant vocables.

 

Jazz

 

 

They Can't Take That Away From Me by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald

 

The song begins with a piano intro along with soft percussion in the background.  The melody tends to follow a pattern: four or five identical consecutive notes followed by either a leap up or  a drop down.   The piano and trumpet accompaniment create a homophonic harmony to the singer.  After the short intro, Ella Fitzgerald begins to sing.  Half way through the song, Fitzgerald drops out and Louis Armstrong takes her place and sings the same melody she has just sung.  About two thirds of the way through, both voices leave and a trumpet solo follows until both singers come back in and sing together.  Thus the form would look like ABCD.  The medium is a piano, trumpet, drumset, and two singers.  Armstrong uses vocables immediately before B.  Improvisation is used in the trumpet solo and more than likely in the trumpet accompaniment also.