Fanfare Assessment

About this piece of work ! After a few lessons practicing on the analysis of famous fanfare pieces, I was assessed on my knowledge of analyzing pieces of fanfares. Out of the list of famous fanfares provided, I chose The Last Post and did a detailed analysis, focusing on the fanfares tempo, dynamics, instrumentation, expressive elements and its structure. Then I chose another piece of fanfare, carefully selected some of its main features and made a comparison between the two pieces, describing the similarities and differences between them. To show that I fully understood the topic on fanfares, I listed the use of fanfare pieces in major events. In this analysis piece, I also had to listen to a specific audio track consisting of a piece of fanfare, and compare different stages of the piece, discussing about its change in rhythm, pitch and tempo. In the end of the assessment, I also labelled different instrumentation parts, dynamic marks and different types of notes.

Why I chose this piece of work ! I chose this piece of work to demonstrate that I am knowledgeable, because to be able to do this analysis, I needed the knowledge about different musical elements and how different fanfare composers used them. After this unit, I understood certain basic musical terms, and gained the knowledge of relating different words to certain terms. For example I learnt that andante, allegro and adagio are some of the Italian words used to describe tempo, while crescendo, piano and forte can be used to describe dynamics. I also needed to know some of the basic information about fanfares, such as what a piece of fanfare is, when is it used and the types of instruments that are usually used in pieces of fanfares.

Reflection on the piece of work ! I consider this piece of work as a major accomplishment, because before this unit, I barely had any idea on what the terms meant and how they were used. But as I took notes and paid close attention to the teacher during class, my knowledge on fanfares expanded significantly, and I was able to write an analysis upon listening to a few pieces of famous fanfares. During the topic, I found quite a lot of terms quite hard to understand (as I have never learnt about them before), but I made sure that I was clear about everything. I think this way really helped me gain more correct information, to be able to do this piece of assessment. I believe that I can improve on this analyzation piece by conducting more research on the family of percussion and brass instruments, as I had some trouble on determining the types of instruments that were being played in the track that we were given.