Masks, Op. 40 Robert Muczynski Analysis

This speech is Karl Paulnack’s welcoming address for incoming freshman students. He addresses that music isn’t apart of arts and entertainment rather music is an invisible force that helps us piece ourselves together. Paulnack believes that music is an essential part of life and goes to prove it by telling his experiences with it. He describes the first moment he truly understood music and the impact it has on people. Paulnack portrays the day after 9/11 after he struggles to find any meaning in being a pianist. After a long time of questioning himself he observes the city and notices something. He sees that in this time of grief and sadness people are singing. From this he learned that music is a form of expression, it allows people to express their feelings when they have no other words to describe them. Paulnack goes on to describe what he says was the most important concert of his life. He and a friend were playing a concert at a nursing home. During their performance, one man began to cry, it was at that time Paulnack knew the man was a veteran. After Paulnack and his friend finished the piece, they announced that the piece they were playing was Aaron Copland's Sonata, which was a work

The first part of this response is to try and identify why John Cage received so much criticism from lovers of traditional music and post war modernists. Cage adopts chance techniques in his compositions and this makes things go awry for him in regard to being referred to as a composer, most critics consider him more of a music philosopher than a composer. Especially after the 19-hour performance of vexations which sadly did not amuse many. The randomness of his compositions makes it hard for him to establish his authority as a composer.

He does not create scores with orthodox musical methods and his music can be unpleasant or even irritating to some; yet by using a technological process, he reveals a naturally occurring acoustic phenomena and demonstrates it an unforgettable physical form. In the simplest way one could imagine (play-record-play-re-record-repeat), Lucier successfully guides the audience to pay attention to listening itself, to sound itself, to the space that we stand in, to the effect that the surrounding environment may have upon us. Other composers may deliver emotions or opinions through their works, but Lucier manages to erase all these subjective judgements, triggers a self-reflecting thinking process and initiate a borderless experience that all audience shared

As a member of the orchestra, Stephen distinguished himself by his solid musicianship, dependability, and leadership. Always on time for rehearsals with his music well prepared, Stephen’s supportive attitude and musical skill inspired his fellow performers. Greatly respected by members of the orchestra, he was appointed concertmaster in his freshman year, a rare accomplishment. In 2005 he won the orchestra concerto competion, and soloed with the orchestra, performing Pablo de Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen. I have engaged him to solo again with

Looking back in time at the great composers of the world, only one foreign composer stands out for his many contributions to classical music and in helping America to find its own music. Antonin Leopold Dvorak was born on September 8th, 1841, in a small village of Nelahozeves in Bohemia that lies on the bank of the Mauldau River. The village Dvorak was born into was in good company and surroundings however also retained much of its native luster even through the worst times of political oppression (1).

In 1892, he moved to The United States to become director of the National Conservatory of Music in America. While he was in the United States he composed one of his most successful symphonies, “From the New World.” This “New World Symphony,” as it is now known, took cues from Native American music and African American spirituals and spread Dvorak’s reputation worldwide. What follows is a report on a performance of this symphony by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan.

When anyone listens to music, they need to be aware of their own preconceptions about what constitutes as art. This is even more important when scholars look the artistic expression of another

Finzi’s compositions include nine song cycles, choral anthems, and numerous instrumental music from clarinet and cello concertos to piano concertos. Finzi had great admiration for composer Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as the Swiss American composer Ernest Bloch, and his compositions reflect that.

Swedish pianist Bobo Stenson’s musical aesthetics is all elegance and graciousness. He earned a sterling reputation while accompanying the brilliant saxophonist Charles Lloyd, who detected the perfect touch in his pianism to better serve his musical intents. Besides the latter, the saxophonist Jan Garbarek and the trumpeter Tomasz Stanko also benefited with his lush chords and beautiful textures to enrich their albums.

Steve Reich is an American composer, who is also a dominant figure in Minimalist Music. Michael Fried critiqued Minimalist Art was "theatrical," because Minimalism artworks were masterpieces only within spectators’ participations. In spite of visual art, Reich's compositions are completely theatrical too. For Reich, he expected his listeners to perceive the gradual movement of sound after they stay with his music a little while (Reich, 11). The unification between process and music becomes the main idea in Reich’s music.

Music during the twentieth century and beyond all found their basis and roots in music produced during the areas preceding it. Wozzeck, Pavanne, and Concerto Grosso by Alban Berg, Bill Evans, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich prove to be no different. All three pieces draw on the inspirations left by their predecessors in order to create truly unique and memorable works. Though the pieces are from the same time period, they sound inherently different. This all stems from the fact that each composer drew from dissimilar musical eras and put their own type of improvisation or flares on the work.

Symphonic poem is a one movement orchestral composition that is based on pictorials and literary ideas. His work consisted of program music, organ music, symphonic poems, Transcriptions and Piano music. Some of his great works were; Annees de pelerinage (years of Pilgrimage), Suisse Orage (storm), Album d’un voyageur, Piano Sonata in B minor, Angiolin dal Biondocrin, Ichmochtehingehem, Les Jeux D’Eaux a la Villa D’Este and Von der Wiegebiszum Grable. The Franz Liszt Academy of Music is likewise known as Zeneakademia was established on November 14, 1875 in honor of Franz in Budapest. Franz wrote books on Chopins

Antonin Dvorak was born in 1841. He was a Bohemian which means that he lied in whats now known as the Czech Republic. His father was a full time butcher who also played zither part time for weddings. This gave Dvorak a chance to hone his abilities by playing fiddle alongside his father. This upbringing gave him contact with mostly folk and dance music. At age 16 Dvorak moved to Prague eventually becoming a professor of composition at Prague Conservatory. Brahms heard his music and offered Dvorak his publishers information. Dvorak accepted which led to him releasing much of his music, such as Cello Concerto in B minor, opus 104, Symphonies no. 7, 8, and 9, Romance for Violin and Orchestra in f minor, opus 11, Serenade for Strings in e major,

McAllister was inspired by different styles of music when he was writing his X Concerto. The musical styles that were incorporated into this work were pop, rock, folk, grunge

Játékok Zongorára is composed by György Kurtág, one of the most prominent Hungarian avant-garde composer and pianist. Kurtág was born in “Lugoj, Romania in 1926” (Kennedy, Kennedy, & Rutherford-Johnson, 2013, p. 471). He had witnessed the era of World War II (1939-1945), “lived through Hungary’s communist regime (1949-1989)” (Coelho, 2014, p. 1), and currently living in his nineties. He was a “tutor at Bartok’s music school” and Liszt Academy in Budapest, Hungary during 1958-1963, and a “coach of National