Jost Van Dyke

The artwork I chose to imagine is Van Gogh’s famous oil painting called Starry Night. It was painted in June of 1889 and has grown to be known as one of his most famous paintings. Van Gogh was a post-impressionist and painted Starry Night from memory in his apartment. The view is of a village from a window in an asylum. I chose this painting because it has always been hanging in my Aunt’s living room. I would sleep over there during the summer since I was about two years old for a about a week…

Pop songs today are laid out in similar ways: verse, chorus, verse 2, chorus, verse 3, chorus. Because of their repetition, choruses usually make up what we see as the “core” of a song. When one thinks of “Rude” by Magic, do they think of the chorus or the verses? What about “Wake Up” by Arcade Fire? We generally think of songs like these as having a “normal” song structure. In fact, very few pop songs go against this grain, with most of the few examples of this not actually being pop songs.…

Giuseppe Fortunio Francescp Verdi was a Italian composer in the 19th century, he was known as one of the most influential composers in the 19th century. Giuseppe was born to Luigia Uttini and Carlo Giuseppe Verdi in Le Roncole Italy in the parm region of Italy. Since days were often considered to begin at sunset, this could have meant he was born on October 9th or 10th of 1813 accordingly to La Traviata Education Materials. One day after Giuseppe was brought until the world he was baptized in a…

In 1978, Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil started working on a musical adaptation of Les Misérables in French. “This show was inspired by Alain’s visit to Cameron Mackintosh’s production of Oliver! in London.” (Musical World.) When Mr. Boublil saw the Artful Dodger he instantly thought of Gavroche and the idea of Les Misérables as a musical was created. They released a French concept album in 1980. In September of the same year a French director by the name of Robert Hossein staged…

The courante (“running” or “flowing”) was a French dance whose choreography included bending the knee on the upbeat or offbeat and rising on the beat, often followed by a step or glide. The music is in moderate triple or compound meter and always begins with an upbeat. In many courantes, including the two in this suite, the meter shifts back and forth between 3/2 and 6/4, sometimes with different voices simultaneously implying different meters. Although the composer included two courantes in…

Snow) by Vincent van Gogh. The date of the painting is probably January 1885. The medium is oil on canvas, mounted to panel. The scale is 23 x 31-1/8 in. (58.4 x 79.1 cm). Second painting I chose is The Mulberry Tree by Vincent van Gogh. The date of is October 1889. The medium is oil on canvas. The scale is 21-1/4 x 25-1/2 in. (54 x 65 cm). Vincent van Gogh was the second born of six children. His family was in a religious Dutch Reformed Church in the south of the Netherlands. Vincent van Gogh's…

specific piece of literature. When the figurative language is utilized it can establish a tone and mood for the reader. In doing so, it also allows for the piece of literature to be defined into different forms like romantic and Gothic literature. “Rip Van Winkle” by Washington and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving have different examples of figurative language that allows for them to be classified as romantic and gothic. During the 1800s, writers began Gothic and romantic forms…

Cello is one of the instruments in strings family. Some of the performance cello were used as a solo instrument or in the ensemble playing. Moreover, this instrument used bass clef but it can be read use treble clef or tenor clef. In Italian, the first name for cello is violoncello. The physical part of the cello same as violin and viola (Liu, 2011). The instruments having a place with the violin family created from the viola da braccio somewhere around 1520 and 1550 in Upper Italy. Cello…

Hector Berlioz was born near the French town of Grenoble on December 11th, 1803. Berlioz started music at the much later age of 12, meaning he was never a ‘child prodigy’. After learning enough theory, he began writing small arrangements and compositions.Due to his father’s discouragement, Berlioz never learnt how to play the piano, instead Berlioz became proficient at playing the guitar and flute. The first performance was at the Paris Conservatoire in 1830. This symphony is the perfect example…

When you see a teenager walking down the street, white earbuds firmly implanted, swaying slightly to their own inner grove, you can be pretty much certain that it’s not classical music they’re listening to. Teenagers I know can enthusiastically rattle off the name of a dozen bands on their current favorite playlist, but ask them if they know who Brahms was and a funny kind of glazed look comes over their eyes. Even my music students, who I’d hope would know better, are astonishingly…