Excerpt+17

1. This Roumanian song tells of the dictator Niculae Caeusescu. Within the song, the vocalist comments “He took our food, our heating and finally our light. He left the world wondering”. It is a song of despair. It is performed by two elderly men, one playing a dulcimer, and the other accompanying his song on the violin. In the song, you will hear a creaking sound. This is produced by the singer using s single hair pulled across the strings of the violin like a bow. Describe ways that at least two elements of music are used expressively, for example, to convey a particular mood and/or emotion in the excerpt. media type="file" key="17 Track 17.m4a" width="300" height="50"
 * Track 17: Roumanian song (2:34) **


 * Mati: **
 * Notes: **
 * - ornaments **
 * - uncertain metre, but still rhythmic **
 * - fleeting violing sounds - 'creaking' creates disturbing **
 * - ducimer continuous semiquavers **
 * - vocals croaked, weeping almost - sound even more tense when combined with creaking sound **
 * - vocals rise, almost yelled, mournful wailing tone **
 * - vocals quasi spoken, harsh vibrato on held notes, almost like ornaments on violin. **
 * Answer: **
 * The harsh and forced tone colours portray the despair of hte musicians, clearly having felt the repressive nature of dictatorship in their lives. The violin played with the bow has a whispy fleeting timbre, combined with use of ornaments, short phrases and short, disjointed rhythmic ideas help hte feeling of weakness and helplesness. When the creaking, harsh nad scratchy timbre of hte violin played with only a hair comes, it brings chills down the spine. The rhythmic values are longer and the melodic ideas simpler but this apparent shift to stability is completely overridden by the timbre, inherently distorted and evoking an image of pain and great imposed sadness. **
 * The vocals follow with the singers great age apparent in the raspiness and wheezyness of his vocal timbre, much like the violins. The text is almost spoken, with the sung aspect coming acress almost like a wail, creating a mournful emotion reminding us of past evils. This is helped by the slides between notes, the occational fast and ornament-like vibrato as well as short and largely uneven phrase lengths. **
 * The dulcimer's continuous semiquaver pattern creates a lulling effect to which we are drawn into the despair of hte vocalist/violinist. It juxtaposes the unpredicatbility of hte other parts and unifies hte excerpt. The minor mode/gypsy scale help the meloncholic mood.﻿ **