New World Symphony

At the beginning of the second movement, the winds and strings are moving mostly together, but not exactly the same. This seems to give off the push and pull feeling of the opening part of that section of the poem. Also the general mood of the movement seems to fit. There are some tougher moments, but it is mostly happy, with birds. There is a content-feeling motive that would seem to emulate Minnehaha. The movement sounds like it is filled with longing, and is kind of pastoral in character. It uses the pentatonic scale in a lot of places too, which can be associated with the culture of the First Nations. That said, a lot of this seems appropriate, and the second movement of Dvořák's New World Symphony can very well be said to reflect "Hiawatha's Wooing."

Die Walkure

Ninety-five percent of the time, I despise "modern" interpretations of things. This is not one of the five percent. There is the odd thing that can have a modern interpretation that is reasonably appropriate, but this is not one of them. For the most part, "modern" interpretations tend to be hokey and contrived, when really the modernization is unnecessary.

Wagner's story of the ring is Fantasy. Making it "modern" is about the worst choice I can think of to do with such an opera. Personally, I think that if Die Walkure is to benefit from modern times, it should go the other way. Special effects, really cool makeup and prosthetics, modern theatrical and filmmaking techniques. Those are the things that it would benefit from. Some of the best and most fantastic fantasy stories are only now possible. I personally believe that magic fire would be really cool. Rather than candles on a table, and a guy who looks like George Lucas singing in a track suit, the characters and situations should be made awesome. The best kind of modernization is using modern technology to convey the old story the way it was meant, not altered to seem like it takes place in modern times. Die Walkure is an epic story. Making new interpretations now is a good idea, but it should be like an epic movie. That seems a lot more like what Wagner would have wanted to me. Flashy! Grand! Loud! Magic fire! A city built by giants! Vikings! A golden ring of power! Awesome soundtrack! It's huge! The reason why movies like Star Wars, and shows like Firefly are called "space operas." They are grand in every scale. I think that every thing in an opera is supposed to be taken to a grand scale. Die Walkure is a grand story, and making it "modern" is just a poor choice. (Though one set in the future would be just as cool as one set where it is intended.) The story is supposed to be grand, and making people connect with it by relating it to modern times does not make it grand. It is an epic story. The "modern" interpretation was not epic.

An inarticulate matter.

Regarding the article by James Webster, "To Understand Verdi and Wagner We Must Understand Mozart"

I had a number of thoughts.

+: I liked the concept of using the music of the past to understand music later. That, in my opinion, is one of the major reasons to study music history.

-: I didn't like that the article was so vague and circumlocutive that the meaning was obscured. It was not a very well-written article, despite its intentions. More on that later.

?: The primary question I had upon finishing the article was "What?" The article created more questions than it answered.

Z: It made me think a lot. Mostly to try and make sense of that garbled mess. When I finally half-understood what he was getting at, I became interested, but it was so tough to get past the messiness of it all.

Finally, to expand on the negative, this article seemed to be almost going out of its way to not make sense. Academic articles tend to be full of jargon and whatnot, that's OK, but when it starts to seem that the article is using mucky wordings and strange choice of vocabulary to obscure the fact that it isn't quite ready to explain its point, it is simply a case of poor writing and lack of preparation. It would seem that the author is aware of his topic, perhaps understands it somewhat, but not enough to relate it in a clear and concise manner. It is not a very good article. It is too bad that there isn't a better article on the same topic.

Expansion on the prior.

Regarding the article, Edward F. Kravitt, "Romanticism Today", The Musical Quarterly, (Spring 1992): pp. 93-109 Specifically, I'll focus on the negative. It was incredibly vague. It covers a lot of content, but doesn't draw any conclusions. It goes on for 16 pages, and doesn't go anywhere. There can be a lot of conclusions drawn, but instead the author chooses to not draw any. He goes on and on and doesn't make any actual decisions. It is essentially a cliffhanger with no sequel. The article creates (and dodges) questions, and doesn't draw any conclusions. Instead it cops out by deciding that there is no real way to define it. Whether or not a definite conclusion can be reached is irrelevant. A large group of small conclusions can still exist. Either way, the author didn't go this way, and decided not to conclude anything. It was merely frustrating.

+-?Z

Regarding the article, Edward F. Kravitt, "Romanticism Today", The Musical Quarterly, (Spring 1992): pp. 93-109

These are my thoughts.

+: I liked that it kept an open attitude, that the definition is open to interpretation.

-: Of course this could also be read as a cop-out because some things are romantic, some are not, and loosely defining something makes it difficult to decide what is defined by it, and what is not.

?: What possible grounding do they have to say there was grand unified pessimism?

Z: It mentions that changes in social life edged on the change, and that is a second layer of art imitating nature.

Romanticism from the top.

To begin the semester, it is important to define what romanticism is on the way in. Based on past experience, I'd define Romanticism as a period in all art and literature that focused on emotion. In music specifically, it showed a trend toward greater chromaticism, loosening of the stricter rules of the Baroque and Classical periods, and use of innovations in instrument technology to create very powerful music. Because of the creation of new instruments, (id est Tuba) Romantic is the first period from which I can get repertoire that was written specifically for tuba, as opposed to other bass instruments. That is to say, I like it best.