Gaetano Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia- Com' e bello

The song composed by Donizetti uses several chordophones like what seems to sound like a harp in the background and violins to accompany the woman singing somberly to the audience. You can clearly listen to these instruments accompanying the singer to support the melody, thus making this song homophonic. Of course, the first song played in the following video is pulsatile and has a pretty slow tempo throughout the song to show the character more emotionally struck. At the beginning of the song, her tone is light and brittle, but she then attempts to hits some high pitches here and there. I really did not see any changes in the tempo; just the instruments carry her through the first part of the song. As the song ended, the audience applauded without any restraint and quietly waited for to her to sing again.
There was a nice change from the tempo in the second piece. The piece had a cheery tone and sounded similar as to what you find commonly in most opera music. The song begins with a low, stressed out pitches and then all of the sudden; it becomes an upbeat song that moves the character forward. Finally, the song changes tempo to build up tension for the last few notes and ends it with a loud, booming crescendo.

The Struggle With Jazz

I apologize that I did not get any proper exposure to jazz music during the last few weeks due to me not having planned this far ahead in time. I seriously wanted to know more about jazz music, specifically free-formed jazz, for a long time, but I never really committed myself entirely into this ethnography project. There was a couple of obstacles that got in the way of researching and going out there to find a audience who is familiar to this twisted form of music.

Researching the history of jazz was simple and easy all thanks to the Internet and the library containing some useful information on the origins of jazz. The information was nice and precise enough to get an idea of the music. Gathering some information was a bit tedious at first, but it slowly became much more enjoyable as I got some helpful info.

What really got in way of further developing my research was the lack of any knowledge about my surroundings in Dallas. I had no idea where I could listen to free-form or just plain jazz anywhere, but when I did find one, the usually asked me if I was 21 years old to go to these bars. I honestly told them I was doing some research for class. They still would not let me in. Maybe I was going to the wrong places at the wrong time. I thinking to of doing Celtic music as a back up as well, but that sort of went no where. Still, I managed to get a decent understanding of where free-form jazz comes from.