Compare and Contrast the Texture and Melody of the Lamb and New York Counterpoint

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Compare and contrast the texture and melody of The Lamb and New York Counterpoint (18) William Blake was born in 1757 and wrote two books in 1789, Songs of Innocents and Songs of Experience. The Lamb was taken from Songs of Innocence and composed by John Tavener (born 1944) in 1982. The Lamb is a sacred anthem taken from the written by William Blake. It is described to be an anthem because it is a piece of music with English text for the choir to sing in a church service. The Lamb is sung by an all male choir who give the song depth and significance by the sound of their voices coming together, this alongside the fact that it is unaccompanied gives the song a spooky church-like feel and helps it sound like a sacred choral piece of music. The poem it is based on is addressed to a lamb however as you continue reading the words you soon realise Blake has purposely put a play on words in the second verse (Bar 15) the words ‘he became a little child’ refers to Jesus Christ, symbolising innocence within mankind. The Lamb is often performed at Christmas as it is one of Tavener’s best known pieces. Steve Reich is an American Composer who was born in 1936 and was a successful minimalist musician. Minimalism consists of making music using repetitions of simple material and evolving them as the piece goes on, other musicians that adopted a similar style includes John Adams and Philip Glass. New York Counterpoint was written in 1985 and is part of a series of pieces in which Steve Reich explores “counterpoint” styles. In each piece one player is given the important role of playing all the contrapuntal strands of the music whilst most of the other players were a pre-recorded track therefore the final performance consisted of backing tack plus a live solo line. The first Performance took place at the Avery Fisher Hall in New York 1986 and was performed by an American

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