Music
Domain focus
MSCE Creative Arts music tests listening, notation, basic theory and contextual knowledge. You should be able to read rhythms and pitches, identify scales, intervals and chords, describe texture and form, and relate music to its cultural setting.
Core rules and concepts
- Elements: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and harmony. Metre is the grouping of beats; tempo is speed.
- Note values in 4/4: semibreve 4 beats, minim 2, crotchet 1, quaver half, semiquaver quarter. Dotted notes add half the value; ties join durations.
- Major scales follow tone-tone-semitone-tone-tone-tone-semitone. Minor scales include natural, harmonic and melodic forms. The tonic, subdominant and dominant triads are chords I, IV and V.
- Cadences: V-I perfect; IV-I plagal; V-VI interrupted; a phrase ending on V is imperfect.
- Texture: monophonic one line; homophonic melody with chords; polyphonic independent lines. African music often uses call-and-response, ostinato, polyrhythm and cyclical form.
Worked example
A four-bar passage in C major ends with G major then C major, both root position, and the melody finishes on C. Reasoning: G is the dominant (V), C is the tonic (I); a root-position V-I with the tonic in the top voice is a perfect cadence. If the passage stopped on G major, it would be an imperfect cadence, because it ends on V and leaves the phrase open.
Traps
Confusing metre with tempo; forgetting that a key signature affects every octave; writing bars that do not add up; calling any cadence ending on V perfect; mislabelling homophonic and polyphonic textures; ignoring an anacrusis when counting bars.