Wolfgang Iser

‘Casablanca’ was released during the golden age of Hollywood film; “a visual and narrative style for making motion pictures and a mode of production used in the American film industry between 1917 and 1960”. It is a style in which falls between formalism and realism. Casablanca makes the shots realistic at the beginning by making the voice over resemble a radio reporter - drawing the audience in and making them feel apart of the story. But the the film is then also filmed in controlled studio…

The Band and Orchestra room is to the left in the hallway and is filled with lockers, instructional pieces, and instruments. The first instrument I see when I enter the room is a wooden piano. The conductors chair is an old office chair that worn down so we can see the padding inside of it. Looking around the room I see many lockers ranging from small to large depending what is inside them. Each locker is completed with a metal door that resembles a jail door. The room has three short floor…

The Melting Pot I choose the “Arabian Waltz” by the Silk Road Ensemble as my song. This group is composed of “distinguished musicians, composers and performing artists from more than 20 countries around the world to celebrate, explore and experiment with a wide variety of cultural approaches to musical performances” (The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma: Live from Tanglewood). At the beginning of the piece I felt very serene with just a couple of instruments playing. However, when all the…

Arcangelo Corelli is an impressionable Italian composer and violinist who exercised a wide influence on his musical peers and on the succeeding generation of composers. Arcangelo Corelli is the 5th child of very prosperous landowners. He was born on February 17 1653 in Fusignano near Bologna, Italy to Santa Raffini who was recent left a widow after his father died just five weeks before his birth. His mother named him after his deceased father Arcangelo. His first teacher is thought to be the…

Music has many effects on the brain. The brain’s ability to absorb and make sense of music is very complex. Regardless of musical style, when music is listened to the brain activates the regions that are involved with movement, memory, planning, and attention- which means that sound isn’t processed with ease. Music is more meaningful to it than any other sound due to it being organized, repetitive, and harmonious. Various types of music have diverse effects on the brain: classical music…

romantic. One of the top musician is named Ian Anderson. He was born on the 10th of August, 1947 at Dunfermline, United Kingdom and has one child named Gael Anderson. His musical group is called Jethro Tull which is a rock band. Andante in C major by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1778 is a famous orchestral music piece. The flute plays beautifully besides the piano and is the main instrument of the song. The flute sounds smooth, dramatic and some parts cheeky. Cheeky means the flute is playing…

Johannes Brahms’s Piano Concerto No.1 in D Minor is split into three movements of varying texture and feel. Full of tension and release, the piece reflects both Brahms’s other works and his life during the time of its composition. Although initially received in 1859 to an overwhelmingly negative reaction, (Lunday 127) the concerto grew in popularity with the help of Clara Schumann and remains a popular composition to this day (Staines 97). Throughout the piece, the delicate balances of…

“With a tense melodic line and taut harmonies, the composition is considered by many to be the most popular of all 20th-century orchestral works,” NPR Music. Adagio for Strings, was written by Samuel Barber in 1936. Originally written as the second movement of Barbers String Quartet, Op. 11, Adagio for Strings has been used frequently in times of mourning. The beauty of this piece is the strong emotions that it invokes from those that hear it. Written during a time, when the world was in a…

Franz Peter Schubert was born around January 31, 1797, in Himmelpfortgrund what was near Vienna. He was an Austrian composer and also wrote something has much as six or seven hundred romantic songs. His works included operas, symphonies, sonatas and many other works through his life time. As a young boy he was mainly focused training his voice and becoming a vocalist but he was skilled in many other things as well. he rarely played his music in the public eyes. He died in November 19,1828, at…

In the past, I want to firstly address that I personally have attended some music concerts on Sacramento State’s campus. However, I had never before attended to a symphonic wind ensemble concert. Before the concert began, I had noticed a large amount of chairs on stage as I found this quite interesting. As it was about to begin, a large amount of musicians wearing black appeared on the stage and were performing a small warmup. As performers, they were a guest group. Once the lights were turned…