Music Review: A Recital of Classics Derived from the Ocean

Bruce Dawe is a highly revered and respected Australian who is regarded as one of the nation’s most influential poets. His poem “The Beach” is regarded has one of his best pieces of work and describes the goings on at one of Australia’s most iconic landmarks. His poem laments how important the beach is to the Australian population as he describes a number of different people from different walks of life enjoying it. Through the clever use of poetics devices and technique Dawe has crafted a poem to beautifully represent the Australian beach.

B. Explanation of the allusion: Dover Beach was a poem by Matthew Arnold which was published in 1867. He wrote the poem while honeymooning with his wife at Dover Beach. Although it contained only 37 lines, it described the beauty of nature on a beach in Dover England as well as the worldly issues of the decline of religious faith. With metaphors and alliteration, Arnold effectively expressed his views and opinions making this most famous work ("Dover").

Not only is George Frideric Handel's Water Music extraordinarily beautiful, it also helped to establish the orchestral suite as a legitimate art form. Written to be performed outside instead of in a theater, it remains one of the most outstanding compositions in Handel's catalogue. Even though it is somewhat overplayed, the Water Music continues to be a very popular work of art. By nature of the venue this great work was to be performed in, Handel had to be very original in orchestration. His strong usage of woodwinds and percussion influenced countless composers such as the wind music of Mozart, Holst, Strauss, Beethoven, Vaughn-Williams, and even Stravinsky. Handel's music proved that he

The poem I will be analysing today is Song of the Surf by Dan Ashlin. Ashlin is a born and bred Australian poet who writes modern poems. I believe that I have a strong connection with this poem because of how much I personally love the beach with the soft sand and the ferocious waves. In my opinion this poem isn’t just about the waves in the ocean, but how the ocean has its own life and story to tell.

As a University of Northern Iowa College student taking Soundscapes, I attended a recital by Annalea Milligan on Wednesday Oct. 19th, 2016 at 8:00 p.m. in Davis Hall, a small auditorium, at the Gallagher Bluedorn. Annalea Milligan received her Bachelor of Music degree in performance at Pacific Conservatory of Music, and is currently a first-year graduate student pursuing a Master of Music degree in bassoon performance at University of Northern Iowa. For the first half of the program she played the bassoon in Rhapsody composed by Willson Osborne and then she was accompanied by Mariya Akhadjanova on piano playing Variations on Theme of Pergolesi composed by Otmar Nussio which included I. Arietta, II. Scherzetto, III. Tamburino, IV. Lamento, V. Ostinato, VI. Rapsodia, VII. Elegia, VIII. Barbaresca, IX. Stornello, and X. Danza. Then after a brief intermission Milligan played the bassoon and was accompanied by Serena Hou with the harpsichord playing Concerto in G Minor, RV 495 composed by Antonio Vivaldi which included Presto, Largo, and Allegro, not to mention she also played Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6 composed by Heitor Villa-Lobos and was accompanied by Azeem Ward with the flute which included I. Aria (Choro), and II. Fantasia. I will depict the first and second part of the recital and describe my reaction and total opinion about the overall concert.

Matthew Arnold’s poem, “Dover Beach” does a great job at portraying what love is talked up to be. He starts the poem by saying, “The sea is calm tonight / The tide is full the moon lies fair / the cliffs of England stand / Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.” (1-2, 4-5.) giving off a peaceful and tranquil tone and adding on to that in the following lines of the stanza. Th importance of the setting of the poem is that it paints a beautiful landscape which gives breath to the idea

Aaron Copland, one of the most highly regarded American composers of the twentieth century, was instrumental in developing a distinctly American style of composition. Fascinatingly, Copland, an openly gay Jewish liberal from Brooklyn, New York, created a musical style synonymous with conservative values, far-reaching western landscapes, and the adventurous pioneer spirit of American settlers. Influenced by American folk music, the simplicity and directness of Copland’s compositional style creates an effortless timeless, and accessible quality. Copland’s significant wartime compositions, “Appalachian Spring Suite,” “Fanfare for the Common Man,” and “Lincoln Portrait,” reflect the influence of American history and culture, while also exemplifying

Last year I had the privilege of seeing the Philadelphia Orchestra perform Gustav Holst’s: The Planets Suite. The piece as a whole is one that pulls the strings of your heart from the first pound to the last mystic moment of silence. It has been a year since I heard the orchestral piece in full, and ever since, I have been awaiting to get an opportunity like that again. It is unfortunately a rare occurance in my generation to feel so strongly about a piece of art. The world is at our fingertips, and yet we have no urge to explore it.

Ralph Vaughan Williams is known as one of the most influential composers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It has been stated that, “Hardly a musical genre was untouched or failed to be enriched by his work…”(Connock). Although he is known for his symphonies and other works, there is much more to Williams’ life and legacy than is written in the lines of his Sea Symphony.

Dover Beach intrigued me as soon as I read the title. I have a great love of beaches, so I feel a connection with the speaker as he or she stands on the cliffs of Dover, looking out at the sea and reflecting on life. Arnold successfully captures the mystical beauty of the ocean as it echoes human existence and the struggles of life. The moods of the speaker throughout the poem change dramatically as do the moods of the sea. The irregular, unordered rhyme is representative of these inharmonious moods and struggles. In this case, the speaker seems to be struggling with the relationship with his or her partner.

On Friday November 3rd I had the pleasure of attending an evening of Opera titled Love Through the Ages with Maria Fortuna and Nancy Townsend at the Sean O’Sullivan Theatre. Having never been to an Opera performance I had no idea of what to expect and was looking forward to this new experience. Fortuna was accompanied by multi-faceted pianist Nancy Townsend. These two musicians showed tremendous expertise and were able to keep my attention through the extent of the program.

At the Salzburg Festival in 2005, Valery Gergiev conducted the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in its performance of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov‘s Scheherazade, Op. 35 (Classical Music db 1). He is a highly achieved, accomplished and revered conductor and is considered to have “attained a level of worldly power perhaps unmatched by any living classical musician” (qtd. by Alex Ross 1). All the wile, this orchestra is considered to be one of the premium orchestras in the World (Moderato 1). Between the two, a performance is created that instantly catches one’s attention with its gentle opening by trumpets, followed by a cello solo, and then the flutes follow with their soft, fluttering sound that makes the listener gently sway with the music. Images of a soft ocean breeze come to mind and its audience is mesmerized.

Matthew Arnold is one of the many famous and prolific writers from the nineteenth century. Two of his best known works are entitled Dover Beach and The Buried Life. Although the exact date of composition is unknown, clearly they were both written in the early 1850s. The two poems have in common various characteristics, such as the theme and style. The feelings of the speakers of the poem also resemble each other significantly. The poems are concerned with the thoughts and feelings of humans living in an uncertain world. Even though Arnold wrote Dover Beach and The Buried Life around the same time, the

The appearance of Dover Beach at this time is only of what the human senses can envision. The speakers looks beneath the surface of Dover Beach and unveils the true nature of the sea. When Arnold stops to really listen to the sea, “he only hears the sea’s melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.” (9). Arnold justifies the theory that things are not always what they appear to be. The world only ‘seems’ to be beautiful, but is ‘really’ a place of conflict, chaos and dangerous misunderstandings.

In the poem "Dover Beach",witten in 1867 Matthew Arnold creates the mood of the poem through the usage of different types of imagery. He uses a dramatic plot in the form of a soliloquy. Arnold also uses descriptive adjectives, similes and metaphors to create the mood. Through the use of these literary elements, Arnold portrays the man standing before the window pondering the sound of the pebbles tossing in the waves as representation of human suffering. The man arrives at the vision of humanity being helpless against nature. Arnold creates the mood by suggesting mental pictures, actions, sights and sounds the man sees. Some examples are "folds of a bright girdle furled", "lie before us like a land of dreams"