Sotto voce

As an iconic American composer, Terry Riley (born 1935) is always considered as a minimalist. However, this kind of thoughts would be ignoring part of his creativity. In fact, Riley added plenty elements in his compositions since 1970s, especially when he started collaborating with the Kronos Quartet. Riley’s composing style is very extensive, including improvisation, polyrhythm and jazz. He adopted classical elements, such as instrumentation, musical forms, structure and tonality. He also combined the elements from different periods to create unique musical textures. This research focuses on Terry Riley’s String Quartet, G Song. The research will be divided into two parts. The first part introduces Riley’s life and the background of G Song. The second part focuses on music analysis, including the musical structure “Two forms in one work”; The harmony “Unresolved Dissonance”; The rhythm “Metric Modulation”; The baroque “Canon”; The modern “Pointillism”. The purpose of this study is to discuss how Riley combined classicism and modernism into a work, and discuss why the statement “Terry Riley is considered as minimalist” would be ignoring part of his story.

在練習樂器的過程中，我們很容易會忽略了一些重要的演奏元素（因為我們都需要在練習中的每一個時刻都注意著各種彈奏細節，包括演奏姿勢、技巧、節奏、音準、和弦、感情、音色、分句…）。若我們一直「錯誤地練習」，不單會拖慢我們的學習進度，更可能會導致學習出現屏障，甚至難以將演奏效果達至更高水平。在審視自己過去的學習過程，以及一直觀察著學生們的成長，我們嘗試在此指出學生們在練習樂器時比較常犯的毛病，並希望透過一些建議，幫助學生找出更有效的練習方法。