Honors 1


For all who have done so well, here is our most challenging section yet. Here we will introduce the idea of a musical fantasy or fantasia. Please note that this word is properly pronounced fahn-tah-SEE-ah. fan-TAY-zheh is a movie by Walt Disney. A fantasy is a freeform composition based on various musical themes, and as the title indicates, anything in the composer's fancy is fair game. I chose a contemporary composition for ogran, St. Anne's Fantasy, which was composed in 1993 for a fantastic organist who lives in Los Angeles named Lisa Edwards.

The lyrics to the first stanza go as follows:

O God, our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come,
our shelter from the stormy blast,
and our eternal home:

The music to the first verse looks like this.
I've also put the score of a few sections here so you can print out the music and see it. Click here to see the section that begins at 1:03. Click here to see section that begins at 1:40.

Here are the events that take place in the music and the time they happen.

When you are ready, click on Listen!

0:00 variant of theme in five note-phrases
0:19 second variant
0:32 third variant
1:03 hymn tune in high notes in right hand as part of homophonic chordal section
Against theme variant in left. You'll hear the theme is fine until the end when it gets a little strange.

1:40 hymn tune slowly in highest notes being played
Variant in low notes played by pedal
2:44 hymn tune in lowest notes against running notes in upper parts
3:33 variant on top
3:45 second phrase of hymn tune on bottom
3:58 hymn tune from beginning in lowest notes
4:34 hymn tune from beginning in pedal (lowest notes)
5:25 variant in middle notes at very end,

I hope you did well. If you didn't hear everything, go back and listen from the beginning. It might take a while. but you'll get it.

Return to classroom.

Return to initial page of site.