I chose to listen to Kyrie from the Pope Marcellus Mass by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. The first element I noticed was the harmony throughout the piece. There were female and male singers; females singing the higher pitched vocals and males the lower pitched vocals. The harmony of this piece created a full sound as if one were at a mass. The piece itself is a smooth flowing mood with not a very distinct rhythm. The singers definitely follow some sort of tempo, however it was hard for me to distinguish actual beats with the singing. The texture of these pieces are homophobic as the vocals are accompanied by the instrumental organ all following the same melody.
The second piece I listened to was Kyrie (monophonic) which was surprisingly very different than Kyrie from the Pope Marcellus Mass. By listening to this piece after the first, I was more able to understand the melody of the piece. On a first listen, this version of the song is a more solemn mood It has a monophonic texture as the singers are not accompanied by any other instrument. There is a distinct different in timbre compared to the previous song. While the first song at the mass was more bright and layered with several harmonies, this song is just a melody and stays in the lower pitch range throughout the entire piece. I also could pick out the rhythm better in this piece as there was only a melody and no harmony.
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
I like and agree with how you mentioned the different pitches that the male and female voices were given in the music piece because I also noticed that as one of the first things. I was able to clearly hear the distinctive voices of the vocals while listening.