The Unanswered Question Analysis

This activity challenged my critical listening skills and developed my ability to appraise music and use aesthetic sensitivity while concentrating on listening to identify the music elements. It was evident that the composer manipulates all the musical elements and qualities to accurately portray the narrative of the Moldau. Elements of music include duration, pitch, dynamic and expression, structure and style, timbre and texture (REF). For example, duration includes rhythm, beat, accent and tempo, that I was able to identify with the loud, triumphant calls of the hunter’s horn, the dominating French horns, and trumpets playing sharp, rhythmic notes. Also, pitch refers to the register of the note in a sound patter (REF). I was able to identify the cheerful mood of the melody that moves in an up and down pitch. Dynamics and expression are evident in the pattern of intensity and volume of the sound with loud trumpets as the river passes the rapids or the bassoon playing low and dark sounds that I thought contributes to dramatic

“No,” she said. “I’m determined to overdo it. Listen,” she exclaimed, as two birds sang together. “Not grieving, nor amorous, nor lost. Nothing to read into it. Simply music, Like Mozart. Complete. Finished. Oh, it is rain to listening ears.” She glanced at Edwin to see how he took this rhetoric. He took it calmly. She let go his hand and capered amidst the fallen eucalyptus leaves.

Through distinctive images composers develop interest, drawing the responder in and thus providing insight into the experiences of others. This is demonstrated in Amanda Lohrey’s novella ‘Vertigo’ as Luke and Anna find themselves in a new and disorientating environment as they attempt to build a new life and in the ‘The Red Tree’ composed by Shaun Tan, through the nameless girl’s journey as she attempts to find herself and her place in the world. Meaning created by distinctive images creates interest thus permitting the responder to gain a greater understanding on how the experiences help shape one’s self.

Immediately revealing the central theme of the poem as well as alluding to the narrator’s apparent self-doubt, the first stanza is an imperative aspect of this piece. The speaker begins by stating that she has “been thinking at random on the universe, or rather, how nothing in the universe is random”. So commences her journey to solve the question:

In the poem there is also an idea of man verses nature, this relates to the survival of the fittest. John Foulcher shows this through the use of first person point of view. For example in the second stanza “Then above me the sound drops” this again possesses sensory imagery creating a deeper human aura throughout the poem. Foulcher further uses a human aura to build a sense of natural imagery for example in the last stanza : “I pick up these twigs and leave them” adding closure

Through studying and analyzing ‘Maestro’ ,written by Peter Goldsworthy, and by viewing and analyzing the film ‘Edward Scissorhands’ directed by Tim Burton, it is evident that the composers of these texts allow the audience to see distinctive experiences with our eyes as well as with our minds through distinctively visual. The many visual, written and literary techniques have the ability to create a significant and impacting visual.

In Act 1, Scene 1, Sheila and Bridie explain “Fifty voices set us free. Fifty voices and a shoe horn…” This orchestra created by Miss Dryburgh gave the women hope and by working together as a group they were able to forget the oppression of the camp, even if it was temporarily. Misto also uses symbolism to represent music. “But we sang our… so the camp would know that there was still music left.” During the darkest time in the war, the only thing they had left was music. This gave every prisoner a glimpse of hope; it was their way of expressing their escape from the war although it was momentarily. Misto uses the technique of motifs and symbolism for music to give the audience a clear visual that there is still hope when there is suffering in the world.

The author uses imagery in the poem to enable the reader to see what the speaker sees. For example, in lines 4-11 the speaker describes to us the

In 1894, a young, quietly colorful Charles Ives enters Yale University. He enters with a strong musical foundation provided by his father and community and a vision of what he thinks music can be. Horatio Parker, Ives’s composition professor unashamedly informs Ives that his vision of music seems blurry, perhaps even nauseating, to the astute, cultured musician. Ives quickly develops anger towards Parker’s traditional tutelage and rarely recognizes the positive effects Parker has on his compositions. Here begins the battle between new and old that Ives and Parker embarked upon during Ives’s college years, however the story starts and ends far from their four short years together.

This composition reads like a fantasy story but it actually arouses the imagination and edifies the human mind to actually value its existence.

The beginning of this poem is about how much the speaker likes loud music. For example the speaker says “the speakers throbbing” which means the music from the speaker has a strong rhythm. This is an Aural imagery. “Jam-packing the room with sound whether Bach or rock and roll” means to crowd to capacity the room with sound. Another phrase is “the volume cranked up so each bass notes is like a hand smacking the gut which means you feel the beat in your guts. Again this is a aural image. This section obvious tells us how much the speak feels about loud music.

“The Feather Theme” develops the main character in the film Forest Gump, as well as establishes the overall mood and atmosphere that the film portrays. The instrumentation used throughout the piece is highly symbolic and assists to underscore the mood for the film and depict minor character traits. The extensive use of the piano and strings work to establish a variety of moods, differing in each theme. For example, the piece opens with a simple, thin textured piano melody accompanied by strings (all playing in their upper registers). This choice of instrumentation creates a feeling of happiness and contentment as the jubilant timbre of the strings and the pure tone quality of the upper tessitura piano combine. Instruments continue to be used symbolically throughout this piece, as the harp is used

“The relationship between the energies of the inquiring mind that an intelligent reader brings to the poem and the poem’s refusal to yield a single comprehensive interpretation enacts vividly the everlasting intercourse between the human mind, with its instinct to organise and harmonise, and the baffling powers of the universe about it.”

Through out history, as man progressed from a primitive animal to a "human being" capable of thought and reason, mankind has had to throw questions about the meaning of our own existence to ourselves. Out of those trail of thoughts appeared religion, art, and philosophy, the fundamental process of questioning about existence. Who we are, how we came to be, where we are going, what the most ideal state is....... All these questions had to be asked and if not given a definite answer, then at least given some idea as to how to begin to search for, as humans probed deeper and deeper into the riddle that we were all born into.

The speaker furthermore conveys the idea that nature is a grandeur that should be recognized by including the element of imagery. The poet utilizes imagery as a technique to appeal to reader’s sense of sight . It is “the darkest evening of the year” (line 8) and a traveller and his horse stop “between the woods and frozen lake” (line 7). By writing with details such as these, readers are capable of effortlessly envisioning the peaceful scenery that lies before the speaker. The persona then draws on reader’s sense of sound. “The only other sound’s the sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake.” The illustration allows readers to not only see,