Healing Heritage: Paul Nordoff Exploring the Tonal Language of Music
- Author: Robbins, Clive & Robbins, Carol
- ISBN: 9781891278068
Complete transcripts of the famous 1974 lectures by Paul Nordoff, the late composer-pianist, who with Clive Robbins, pioneered Creative Music Therapy. Dr. Nordoff dialogues with his students about the expressive dynamics of each tonal and rhythmic component of music, and through musical examples from various composers throughout history, demonstrates their therapeutic significance. 1998, 240 pages, Paperback.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWORD
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
A short biography of Paul Nordoff
The setting of the course
The students
The relevance of these explorations to other client groups
Preparing the text
On the typography
The recordings
A concluding perspective
EXPLORATION ONE
Scales: Steps and Skips
The dynamic properties of scales
Scale passages and skips in melodic construction
The scale as a musical statement
Dynamics of scalar movement
Stepwise movement in the bass
EXPLORATION TWO
Steps, Skips, and Creative Leaps
Exploring inherent tonal directions
From the tonic upward
From the second scale tone
From the third scale tone
Including the fourth scale tone
Including the fifth and higher tones
Inherent directions and creative leaps
Completing melodic phrases
Enlivening the melodic role of the dominant
The need for creative leaps
Editor’s note
EXPLORATION THREE
Tonal Directions and Creative Leaps in Polyphony and Homophony
Directions of tones, reviewed
Tonal directions and creative leaps in Bach fugue subjects
Homophony: the influences of harmony upon tonal directions
A principle of counterpoint disregarded
Tonal directions in harmonic writing
Editor’s note
EXPLORATION FOUR
The Life of the Intervals
Zuckerkandl’s imaginative thinking about music
Experiencing intervals
Steiner’s interval concept
The character of the octave
Practicing experiencing intervals
Becoming aware of the life of the intervals in a composition
Editor’s note
EXPLORATION FIVE
The Interval Concept and the Potential in the Single Tone
The interval concept and its application to therapy
The potential of the single tone
Studying, absorbing, and applying: the living process
EXPLORATION SIX
Elaboration of the Interval Concept
Inner balance, tension, then resolution
The diminished seventh chord
Analyzing intervallic movement
Deriving inspiration from the great composers
Intervals in alteration
EXPLORATION SEVEN
Triads and Inversions
The triad in the root position
The inherent qualities of inversions
The sixth chord
Inverted triads
The six-four chord
EXPLORATION EIGHT
Triads and Inversions in Their Relation to the Interval Concept
The intervallic components of triads and inversions
Freeing triads from harmonic tradition