Music: In History (Part 1)

Each era of music has brought new sounds and ideas and instruments. Music has played major roles in each era and with each society it was played to. Each musician had an emotion that they were portraying in their music, such as with the major or minor modes. With these modes the musician was able to tell the audience a story of emotions from happy to sad. By creating dynamics composers could take an audience for a ride and to encourage them even more to engage themselves in the music. I believe that in today’s style of music people engage themselves in it, they will identify with a song, and they listen to the words and feel emotions toward what the artists are saying. It’s an interesting thought that audiences back in the Baroque and Classical eras only had notes to engage themselves in emotionally. People today can identify easily with a few lines of lyrics to a song; its impressive to think that the audience back then had to decide what an entire movement meant to them, they didn’t have anyone reciting words to them telling them what the song was about.
The best thing that was presented in this section was the story of “Vivaldi’s Girls”. I loved how much time and dedication Vivaldi gave to the girls in the church. I can’t help but think he had a compassionate heart from God to be able to serve as a priest and composer for less fortunate girls. He was able to give those girls something to be proud of in their lives, especially when visitors would come to listen to what the girls had to perform. For people to say things like, “They sing like angels, and play violin, flute, organ, hautboy, violin, cello, bassoon, in short, there is not instrument so large as to frighten them,” must have been very uplifting for the girls in that church to hear. I also like that a tradition now is when musicians want to perform at that church they must have at least one Vivaldi piece to play.
Music can be so influential on people’s emotions and on society as a whole. The “Mozart Effect” is a great example of how “powerful” music can seem to be. I have heard that listening to classical music could possibly increase a young child’s brain development; I hadn’t heard that it could “improve your special reasoning ability”. I didn’t know that it has been debated about with older people and whether classical music helped them as well. I thought that Dr. Anthony J. Palmer made some interesting points about this theory. He discussed that with his experience it seemed natural to students who were in music programs at school were also into their academics and leadership in school. The already over achieving students would naturally want to be challenged more in other areas than those that were required from them. Dr. Palmer said, “Expressing oneself artistically is a fundamental aspect of being a human.” I agree with him for the most part. However, I was heavily into the choral program at my high school and was not an over achieving student by any means. Yes, I enjoyed the challenge of the music given to me and I enjoying expressing myself that way. However, I do not think that being around that style of music daily helped me in my school work or gave me a spurt of special reasoning. I can see a correlation between music and academics like Dr. Palmer suggests, but I think that’s as far as we can go with it.
Music is a powerful thing for people. There is an unusual way that people can relate to the sound of how notes are played and the dynamics of the piece. I think that the Baroque and Classical Eras brought a lot of emotion into the music world. People today are listening to music on the radio and identifying themselves with what words are being heard. I think it would be so much better to be able to identify myself with what a melody or harmony sounds like. Unfortunately the music that is being played today is playing a role in today’s society. If only what had more of a major role in society was something as harmless as Mozart, the people’s emotions and engagements would be a lot sweeter.