Timbre

The movie Her directed by Spike Jones follows the life of Theodore while he is in a dark point in his life. At the beginning of the movie Theodore is a very lonely adult working as a letter writer for others.Throughout the movie he is going through a divorce that hits him very hard. He buys the world's first artificially intelligent operating system self named Samantha. Throughout the movie Theodore and Samantha grow closer and closer and starts to make certain doubts and problems as they fall…

Shostakovich’s music and his musical style were directly affected by the political climate in Russia. He grew up and lived in a time of great turmoil, with wartime shortages and the 1917 revolution the first few years of his life had not been uncomplicated. Some of these events that transpired during his early life are observed in his 2nd, 11th, and 12th Symphonies. Shostakovich took influence from the likes of Prokofiev and Stravinsky during the earlier part of his career. His 2nd Symphony- a…

Douglas Presnell Music 308B 14 Feb 2017 Count Durazzo and the Reformation of Italian Opera My grandson recently asked me about my past adventures when I was younger. I decided to tell him about the time I snuck into the cast party for the ballet Don Juan, ou Le Festin de pierre. It was 1761 in Vienna. I wanted to meet the creators of that ballet to try to see if I could be in one of their productions, so I pretended to be one of the stage workers to get in. Thinking back on it, it was a…

Multiple Intelligences; Intrapersonal and Spatial Intelligences Dr. Howard Gardner the Professor of Education at Harvard University developed the theory of Multiple Intelligences in 1983. In his book “Frames of Mind”, he proposed the existence of at least seven basic intelligences. More recently, he has added an eight and discussed the possibility of the ninth one. The theory of MI is an attempt of understanding how children learn. Through different abilities, such as reading, writing, moving…

Johann Joseph Fux Johann Joseph Fux was an Austrian composer and theorist. He studied language, logic, law and music both at Graz University and the University of Ingolstadt from 1680 to 1687. Around 1695, Fux was appointed to the imperial court of Hungarian bishop Leopold I. While in the court of the emperor, Fux dedicated the Missa SS Trinitatis to Leopold I. Johann Fux kept his position in the court after the death of Leopold I, the reign of Joseph I, and Charles VI. He was appointed…

For this paper I attended two events, one large scale and one small-scale. For the large-scale event I attended Mahler’s Symphony no. 6 in A minor and for the small-scale event I attended Seraphic Fire- Mozart: Requiem. I attended Mahler’s Symphony no. 6 in A minor first. For this event there were not any issues with this venue. The only drawbacks to this event were that the tickets were pretty pricy and for this reason I had to attend this event alone. For me to get a pair of seats together the…

The one quote that summarizes this whole book completely, comes pretty late during the analysis. “Music may be the activity that prepared our pre-human ancestors for speech communication and for the very cognitive, representational flexibility necessary to become humans.” (Daniel J. Levitin, 260.) This quote pretty much expresses the full meaning of this book, which is to explain the innate importance and development of music. This quote is received when the argument about how music has evolved…

many different trumpeters as well, making it hard to hone in on specifics on the technique of playing. Ludwig Guttler, however, did appear on many of the pieces and had an interesting sound. At first listen, I was struck by the style of his tone and timbre. Ludwig sounded very, in the throat, as in playing far back into his mouth and throat. The sound almost sounded a bit muffled at times. Guttler’s range and tonguing also struck me. His tonguing was very frontal in attack, something I have been…

Throughout the years, women have fought for the same rights as men do. Some may argue that women are still doing this with the current wage gap and the fight against sexual assault. But poet Carmen Giménez Smith does this in a different way. In her poetry, she shows the raw reality of being a female in the darkest ways. Giménez Smith work explores many issues that affect the lives of females. Many of her works have an underlying tone of brutally honest realism in it. For example, in “Bleeding…

Imagine a world without words, no opinions, no wishes, no promises or laughter– imagine a life without language. Language is the method of expression, sharing, communication, collaboration and culture. We use language to express inner thoughts and emotions, understand abstract and intricate thought and fulfill our desires. Humans are not unique in this capability, with various species, including animals and even some plants, communicating with each other. However, language is unique in humans…