Choose two pieces from the Week 5 and Week 6 listening selections. One of your choices MUST BE either "Free Jazz" by Ornette Coleman or "Interstellar Space" by John Coltrane. Your other choice can be any of the other selections. Please select two pieces that demonstrate contrary positions to the question of whether a clear shape can be apprehended through listening.

One of your choices MUST BE either of t?his two.

Ornette Coleman, "Free Jazz" (1960)

https://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/be%7Crecorded_cd%7Cli_upc_5055731805283

(track 21, ca. 38 minutes long!)

alternate link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPDzlSda8P8

John Coltrane, "Interstellar Space" (1967)https://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibliographic_entity%7Crecorded_cd%7C680090

all tracks)

alternate link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyIPmmCmIb0&list=OLAK5uy_m1iZXaicytsLRIV3ZXlh5KcX5QI2B8Wz0

One of your choices MUST BE from following.
 

Morton Feldman, "Four Pianos" (1957)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCTkzgSePiQ

Morton Feldman, "Durations 2" (1960)

https://imprec.bandcamp.com/track/morton-feldman-durations-2-1960

John Cage, "Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music" (1959)

https://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibliographic_entity%7Crecorded_cd%7C73286

John Cage, "HPSCHD" (1969)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_hTxJpWITw

(please ignore the silly graphic!)

Steve Reich, "Come Out" (1966)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0WVh1D0N50

Much of the music in these two weeks creates a sense of chaos, disorder, incomprehensibility. This is presumably intentional. Yet all of the pieces are ordered in some way, or at least manifest a form after the fact. A straightforward way to identify shape is to note where changes in the music occur. For the shape to be an overall, large shape that reflects the entire piece, you should identify only a handful of significant, easily noticed changes. If a music displays too many constant changes, occurring on a short time scale, it will be very hard to identify an overall shape. If you can mark off the significant handful of changes that define a shape, you should be able to remember them and note them in advance when you listen again to the piece.

For both of the pieces you choose, attempt to note the overall shape by identifying significant musical changes. You don't have to say exactly what the change was, just describe it as best you can, so that a reader can confirm what you have identified. This task requires focussed and continuous listening, a kind of searching over time for the next marker of musical shape. In effect, a kind of analytic listening. Do your best to mark out, or "map", the shape of each piece you've chosen, and then reflect on what has happened to your listening relationship to the piece as a result of this close, directed listening process.