Исследовательская работа на тему Music in our life

МОУ «Ватинская общеобразовательная средняя школа»

Выполнила: ученица 7 класса

Тулеуленова Мейрамгуль

Руководитель:

учитель английского языка

Сулейманова Г.Х.

Вата, 2010

PLAN

1. Introduction……………………………………………………………3

2. The main part

1. Music is the universal language of mankind………………………………4

2. 20-th century music styles………………………………………………....6

3. Musical festivals …………………………………………………………14

3. Conclusion……………………………………………………………..15

References……………………………………………………………..17

INTRODUCTION

"Music washes away from the soul

the dust of everyday life".

Berthold Auerbach

It is difficult to live without music. We hear music everywhere: in the streets, at home, over the radio and on TV, in the shops, in the parks and in the concert halls, at the seaside, sometimes in the forest.

We can't live without music. We like to listen to music, we enjoy to dance to music, we play musical instruments.

The dictionary defines music as "the arrangement of sounds made by the instruments or voices in a way that is pleasant or exciting." But in fact music is a much more complicated notion.

The aim of our work is to define the place of music in our life.

The main problems of our work are

• to examine music's influence on mankind

• to examine styles of music and musical festivals.

Now I will try to go deeper into these spheres.

MUSIC IS THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE OF MANKIND

Music isn't a combination of pleasant sounds only. It is the art that reflects life. Moreover, it reflects ideas and emotions using no words. People all over the world are equally moved by the beauty of Tchaikovsky's music, whereas "Seventh Symphony" by Shostakovich is understandable to all those who know about the unprecedented heroism of Russian people during the Great Patriotic War.

Certainly the appreciation and understanding of real music comes in time and very much depends on the person's education and intelligence. It's especially true with such musical genres as symphony, concerto, chamber music, opera and ballet. All these enchanting melodies need patience, concentration and peace of mind.

However, young people nowadays gravitate towards new rhythms. It is probably the result of changing times and influence of mass media. Pretty much like the immortal creations of Mozart and Handel pop music unites the teenagers all over the world. Moreover, it makes them feel a part of global family.

I must say that the society has become much more tolerant to hard rock, heavy metal and rap music. It's probably explained by the fact that…

Nowadays it's almost impossible to escape from music, even if we want to. It thunders out of every high street shop, hisses horribly through other people's stereos on public transport, lulls you in hotel lobbies and restaurants, and blasts out of wound-down car and van windows.

But, although we all can now have music wherever we go, very few of us have any real idea of the effect music has on the human system. For many years it has been assumed that musical tastes are subjective - that one person will like jazz while another prefers classical.

But recent research in America and Australia has shown that appreciation of music is not a matter of individual taste. Certain types of music will have a particular effect on us, regardless of whether we like them or not. For instance, some music will help us feel relaxed and peaceful, whereas other types may be stimulating to the brain, encouraging curiosity and alertness. Some music promotes loving feelings; other sounds whip up hate, jealousy, and violence.

As a result, music is being used in hospitals, and doctors have found that twenty minutes of soothing music is often far more effective than tranquilizers or sleeping pills. For example, after a recent operation, Fiona Richmond, 15, was allowed to listen to baroque music because it was good for her.

According to researcher Susan Burghardt, all music can be divided into three types, and each one has profound effects on the body and mind. The first is low-energetic music, the sort that makes you feel bad. Most rock music falls into this category. In fact it has been discovered that rock music makes people feel hate instead of love. The work of some classical composers, such as Debussy and Schonberg, has also been found to be harmful.

The next category is high-energy music. This makes you feel better and it can help to normalize heart rate. J.S.Bach is exceptionally high energy.

The third category is prayerful music. This is the most healing of all. Much of the classical music written before 1600 falls into this category.

It seems that most Jazz and Country and Western is simply neutral, having neither a healing nor harming effect.

Scientific work on the healing power of music started with plant research in the 1970s. Many types of classical music speeded plant growth, whereas heavy metal caused plants to draw away from the speakers and die.

Thus music can really be called a universal language understandable not to people, but also to our bodies and plants.

Generally speaking the reaction on music is very subjective. As the English proverb goes: "One's man meat is another man's poison." In fact any music can be comprehended and interpreted in different ways. To my mind this is the most appealing feature of music. It's highly democratic and free from any sort of dictatorship. That makes it the most universal common language of mankind nowadays and ever.

20-TH CENTURY MUSIC STYLES

The 20-th century is by all means considered to be the most influential period of time in the development of music. In the 20-th century there were more practicing musicians than in all previous centuries taken together. In the 20-th century there was no mainstream but various styles in music. It is not an easy task to describe these music styles. They reflect the world that was constantly changing. Desires and fears of the people of the 20-th century found their outlet in music. The 20-th century opened a new era in the history of mankind, and the new epoch was to be described in new musical forms. The rules were left in the past. In the 20-th century everybody could choose the music that he would enjoy. It was exciting in its adventurous freedom.

In the 1920s in New Orleans beautiful music filled the streets and cafes. The black and poor singers sang about their hard lives. Their music - jazz, ragtime and blues - soon traveled to Europe. It was the time when the black music entered the whites' culture changing the lifestyle of the people all over the world. Ever since the 1930s music was not just a way to relax. From that time on music began to reflect and determine the people's way of life.

Many sub-cultures developed as a result of the fusion of black and white music cultures. Black music evolved in the Caribbean and in the United States, later it moved to Britain. Such styles as reggae, rap, hip-hop to say nothing of the blues were created by the black community. Today many white musicians either perform the black music or use the black melodies in creating their own songs.

In the 1940s and 1950s new styles of music emerged. Swing, rock'n'roll and singers like Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry destroyed the laws of morality that were imposed on the people by the Church for centuries. In the 1950s Elvis Presley became the king of rock 'n' roll in the United States of America. The new music travelled to Europe soon. It was especially popular among the teenagers. The parents were really shocked by "Devil's music" that their children adored. The young people disagreed with their parents, wore their jeans and danced to their rock 'n' roll records.

In the 1960s in Great Britain, in Liverpool a new band was created. It was soon to be known world-wide as the "Beatles". John Lennon and Paul McCartney were writing simple songs and performing them so brilliantly that they gave a new impulse for the development of the musical community. Other members of the famous group were George Harrison and Ringo Starr. Such songs as "Yesterday", "Let It Be", "Love Me Do", and "Yellow Submarine" made them the most popular band not only in England, but throughout the world as well.

From the British Isles their music quickly travelled to Europe, America and other continents. Early in 1964 what soon came to be called "Beatle mania" struck the United States. For the first time British pop music was important abroad. Such U.S. performers as Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley admired the music of the "Beatles".

The long hair and tastes in dress of the musicians became popular in different countries. The freshness and excitement of the earliest days of rock 'n' roll and simple but engaging lyrics of John Lennon and Paul McCartney kept the group at the top of popularity charts for several years. They won recognition from the music industry in the form of awards for performances and songs. Soon they became not only popular, but rich as well. With the money they earned they could experiment with new musical forms and arrangements. The result was a variety of songs ranging from ballads to complex rhythm tunes and songs of social comment. Their music inspired hundreds to create new music.

In 1969 at Woodstock, near New York a great rock festival attracted nearly half a million young people. Most of them were hippies, who shocked the world with their beards, long hair, old jeans and their calls for peace and love. They came to listen to such new stars as Jimmy Hendrix and Joe Cocker. They sang about the war in Vietnam and about violence in the world. The music performed at Woodstock had a tremendous influence on the development of the culture of the youth. The young people rose in protest against the mercantile society. The ideals of the hippies are still living in many hearts. In the middle of the 1990s the Woodstock festivals were revived. But today Woodstock is no longer a great party it used to be in 1969. Young people who come to Woodstock today simply want to see the violent youth of their parents.

The mid-1970s witnessed great changes in the music. The gentle mood of the 1960s was gone. The music became violent and aggressive. This was a protest of the new generation, not peaceful pacifist protest of Woodstock, but protest aimed at the negation and destruction of the existing order. Hard rock, heavy metal and punk became popular among the young. Such groups as "AC/DC", "Kiss", "Black Sabbath", and "Sex Pistols" shocked the public by their music and behaviour. Although music of such kind still has its fans, the peak of its popularity has decreased.

Music that developed in the 1970s and 1980s had its own peculiarities. Melodies were simple and often unoriginal, different group would easily borrow the popular melodies written by competing groups. Young people would not listen alone to their favourite bands; they would rather have a get-together or a party or go to a disco club. The new music styles that appeared in the 1980s were aimed at dancing and disco clubs, thus rhythm and beat became more important than the melody.

Multiculturalism found its expression in the music. In the 1980s young people started to listen to different kinds of music and they were not afraid of choosing what they really loved. No single style or set of styles can be attributed to the 1980s and 1990s. The best world to characterise what was going on in the world of music at that time is diversification.

The epoch found its best expression in techno music. A British band "Depeche Mode" was the first to express the realities of a complex and constantly changing society through highly elaborate music. This was the music of technological advance and breakthrough, the message of the rhythm was the dependence of our civilization on the machines that were able to do everything faster and better than humans do.

The 1990s witnessed further changes in the world of music. Pop music became extremely fashionable among young people. Madonna, Michael Jackson, and "Spice Girls", and "Backstreet Boys" give an example of what teenagers preferred to listen. At the same time a powerful opposition to the pop music appeared. Rave, techno, rap, chaos, and acid styles were gaining momentum in the 1990s. Young people who preferred this kind of music would never attend a pop show because of a general disgust and hatred for pop music.

The music of the 20-th century did a lot to change the outlook of the people, make peace, and bring some positive social changes. It still plays a great role in the life of the people of the 21st century. Everything either happy or tragic that occurs in our life is set to music.

Now let's review some styles of music.

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre created within the African-American communities in the Deep South of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The blues form which is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll is characterized by the use of specific chord progressions - the twelve-bar blues chord progressions being the most frequently encountered - and the blue note that for expressive purposes are sung or played flattened or gradually bent (minor 3rd to major 3rd) in relation to the pitch of the major scale.

The blues genre is based on the blues form but possesses other characteristics such as specific lyrics, bass lines and instruments. Blues can be subdivided into several subgenres ranging from country to urban blues that were more or less popular during different periods of the 20th century. Best known are the Delta, Piedmont, Jump and Chicago blues styles. World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience. In the 1960s and 1970s, a hybrid form called blues rock evolved.

The term "the blues" refers to the "the blue devils", meaning melancholy and sadness; an early use of the term in this sense is found in George Colman's one-act farce Blue Devils (1798). Though the use of the phrase in African American music may be older, it has been attested to since 1912, when Hart Wand's "Dallas Blues" became the first copyrighted blues composition. In lyrics the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood.

Rapping (also known as emceeing, MCing, spitting (bars), or just rhyming) refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics with a strong rhythmic accompaniment". The art form can be broken down into different components, as in the book How to Rap where it is separated into "content", "flow" (rhythm and rhyme), and "delivery". Rapping is distinct from spoken word poetry in that is it performed in time to the beat of the music.

Rapping is a primary ingredient in hip hop music, but the phenomenon predates hip hop culture by centuries. Rapping can be delivered over a beat or without accompaniment. Stylistically, rap occupies a gray area among speech, prose, poetry, and song. The use of the word to describe quick speech or repartee long predates the musical form, meaning originally "to hit». The word had been used in British English since the 16th century, and specifically meaning "to say" since the 18th. It was part of the African American dialect of English in the 1960s meaning "to converse", and very soon after that in its present usage as a term denoting the musical style. Today, the terms "rap" and "rapping" are so closely associated with hip hop music that many use the terms interchangeably. (For purposes of clarity, this article focuses on rapping as a technique or activity. For more information on the music genre, see hip hop music.)

Pop music is a term that "from the late 1950s has been applied to the central and most widely circulated kinds of popular music", such as rock and roll and its related forms. Pop music originated in the United States in the 1920s from a family of folk music styles including blues and country that went on to form the basis of rock and roll and its subsequent forms. While pop and rock are related, or even, in some definitions, put together under the same heading, rock critics since the 1960s have tended to depict pop and rock as opposites; rock critics tend to consider rock as "serious" and "authentic" and call pop music "light" and "commercial".

Some definitions of pop are very broad and inclusive, covering all contemporary popular forms, including rock, country, reggae, rap, and so on. Other definitions are more narrow, defining pop as singles-based music aimed at teens. Pop music tends to written in a tuneful, repetitive style that makes it accessible to a general public. Pop songs are usually from two and a half to three and a half minutes long, with a clear rhythm, a catchy melody, and often, a verse-chorus structure. The lyrics of modern pop songs typically focus on simple themes such as love and romantic relationships.

Technology has played a major role in dissemination of pop music, from the role of radio broadcasts which popularized country songs in the US in the 1920s, to television shows which promoted pop songs in the 1950s, to music video television channels in the 1980s. Technology has also played an important role in the production of pop music, ranging from the use of the microphone for singing, beginning in the 1920s, which permitted a more intimate, expressive vocal style, to the use of multitrack recordings, beginning in the 1960s, which gave producers much more control over the finished sound. In the 1970s and 1980s, pop music began to use synthesizer technologies to create new sounds; this creative use of new technologies continued in the 1990s and 2000s with the use of digital sampling, vocoders, and digital synths.

Rock music is a genre of popular music that entered the mainstream in the 1950s. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, rhythm and blues, country music and also drew on folk music, jazz and classical music. The sound of rock often revolves around the electric guitar, a back beat laid down by a rhythm section of electric bass guitar, drums, and keyboard instruments such as Hammond organ, piano, or, since the 1970s, synthesizers. Along with the guitar or keyboards, saxophone and blues-style harmonica are sometimes used as soloing instruments. In its "purest form", it "has three chords, a strong, insistent back beat, and a catchy melody."

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, rock music developed different subgenres. When it was blended with folk music it created folk rock, with blues to create blues-rock and with jazz, to create jazz-rock fusion. In the 1970s, rock incorporated influences from soul, funk, and Latin music. Also in the 1970s, rock developed a number of subgenres, such as soft rock, glam rock, heavy metal, hard rock, progressive rock, and punk rock. Rock subgenres that emerged in the 1980s included new wave, hardcore punk and alternative rock. In the 1990s, rock subgenres included grunge, Britpop, indie rock, and nu metal.

A group of musicians specializing in rock music is called a rock band or rock group. Many rock groups consist of an electric guitarist, lead singer, bass guitarist, and a drummer, forming a quartet. Some groups omit one or more of these roles or utilize a lead singer who plays an instrument while singing, sometimes forming a trio or duo; others include additional musicians such as one or two rhythm guitarists or a keyboardist. Rock bands from some genres, particularly those related to rock's foundations in rock and roll, include a saxophone. More rarely, groups also utilize bowed stringed instruments such as violins or cellos, and brass instruments such as trumpets or trombones.

More recently the term rock has been used as a blanket term including forms such as pop music, reggae music, soul music, and sometimes even hip hop, with which it has often been contrasted through much of its history.

Electro (electro-funk, dance or electro-boogie) is a genre of electronic music directly influenced by the use of TR-808 and funk records. Records in the genre typically have electronic sounds and some vocals are delivered in a deadpan, mechanical manner, often through a vocoder or other electronic distortion.

Drum and bass (commonly abbreviated to D&B or DnB) is a type of electronic dance music which emerged in the mid 1990s. The genre is characterized by fast breakbeats (typically between 160-190 bpm, occasional variation is noted in older compositions), with heavy bass, sub-bass lines, and occasional infra-bass lines. Drum and bass began as an offshoot of the United Kingdom rave scene of the very early 1990s. Over the first decade of its existence, the incorporation of elements from various musical genres led to many permutations in its overall style.

House is a style of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, USA in the early 1980s. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American, Latino American, and gay communities; first in Chicago, then in Detroit, New York City, New Jersey, and Miami. It then reached Europe before becoming infused in mainstream pop and dance music worldwide since the early to mid-1990s.

House is strongly influenced by elements of soul- and funk-infused varieties of disco. House generally mimics disco's percussion, especially the use of a prominent bass drum on every beat, but may feature a prominent synthesizer bassline, electronic drums, electronic effects, funk and pop samples, and reverb- or delay-enhanced vocals.

MUSICAL FESTIVALS

A music festival is a festival oriented towards music that is sometimes presented with a theme such as musical genre, nationality or locality of musicians, or holiday. They are commonly held outdoors, and are often inclusive of other attractions such as food and merchandise vending machines, performance art, and social activities. The Pythian Games at Delphi included musical performances, and may be one of the earliest festivals known. During the Middle Ages festivals were often held as competitions.

Many festivals are annual, or repeat at some other interval. Some, including many rock festivals, are held only once. Some festivals are organized as for-profit concerts and others are benefits for a specific cause.

Another type of music festival is the educative type, organized annually in local communities, regionally or nationally, for the benefit of amateur musicians of all ages and grades of achievement. While entrants perform prepared pieces in the presence of an audience which includes competitors, the essential feature of this type of festival is that each participant receives verbal and written feedback, there and then, from a highly qualified, professional adjudicator - someone who they might never meet in any other way. They also usually receive a certificate, classified according to merit, and some may win trophies. The competitive element is often played down, however, as the important aspect is that participants can learn from one another. Such festivals aim to provide a friendly and supportive platform for musicians to share in the excitement of making music. For many they provide a bridge between lessons and examinations and performing confidently in public.

There are a lot of musical festivals. For example: Castle Dance, Therapy Session , Sound City, Pirate Station.

CONCLUSION

So, people all over the world are fond of music. But what is music? Specialists explain that music isn't only a combination of pleasant sounds. It is an art which reflects life. Nowadays it's almost impossible to escape from music, even if we want to.

Certain types of music will have a particular effect on us, regardless of whether we like them or not. For instance, some music will help us feel relaxed and peaceful, whereas other types may be stimulating to the brain, encouraging curiosity and alertness. Some music promotes loving feelings; other sounds whip up hate, jealousy, and violence.

According to researcher Susan Burghardt, all music can be divided into three types:

• low-energetic music

• high-energy music

• prayerful music.

Many types of classical music speeded plant growth, whereas heavy metal caused plants to draw away from the speakers and die.

There are a lot of different kinds of music. For example: blues, rap, country, pop, rock, electro, drum and base, house, techno.

We conducted questioning among a student 5-11 classes.

Musical tastes in our school:

REFERENCES

1. Журина Т.Ю. 55 устных тем по английскому языку для школьников 5-11 кл. - М.: Дрофа, 1996.

2. Миньяр-Белоручева А.П. English. - М.: Издательство «Экзамен», 2007.

3. Миньяр-Белоручева А.П. English. Ответы на экзаменационные билеты для 11 класса. Устный экзамен, теория и практика. - М.: Издательство «Экзамен», 2005.

4. Ожегов С.И.Словарь русского языка. - М.: ООО «Издательский дом «Оникс 21 век», 2004.