Goodbyes and Reflections

The semester is coming to a close and so is this blog. I have to admit that it was quite a roller-coaster ride. I started out ignorant about much of the context and and musical devices explored in this course, and if I remember correctly, I believe that I strongly disliked the first piece I ever analyzed: Monteverdi's l'Orfeo. It is amazing to see how much has changed since that first blogpost and how much still remains the same. Firstly, I no longer hate l'Orfeo, in fact, I love it and regularly play it on my computer--especially Orfeus' deeply touching and beautiful recitative "Tu sei morta." The beauty of the singer's voice, the expressiveness captured by the recitative style and lack of distracting music makes it one of my favorites. I get wonderful thrills when I hear an episode of madrigal-like or word painting. I am surprised at the change.

I feel that ever since that first negative experience with l'Orfeo, I have gained a new level of appreciation for musical pieces different from what I am familiar with and I have become a bit more appreciative of what I perceive as dissonance and rise up to analyze it instead of backing away. I do not feel however, that I have completely changed; my experience with the last piece for this class, Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, showed me that there still exist a very real limit as to what I can accept as beautiful or even striking. However, although I feel that although I do not like the piece, I have made my peace with it. 

I don't think I will ever call this piece a masterpiece--I am still not convinced that Stravinsky had a clear understanding of what he was attempting to portray or who he was presenting it too--and I believe that it is this generous nature of music and this interaction between material, composer, and audience which makes a piece come alive. Nevertheless, I can concede that it is a masterpiece to some people. However, I think that it has become a masterpiece and musical to many not because of a particular quality or gesture in the piece which attempts to engage its listeners but because Stravinsky's acknowledged talent as a great composer and his audience's desire to understand this talent and experience it for themselves has created a new type of connection between the music and its listeners--an educational one-- which has allowed Le Sacre du Printemps to survive into present times because there exists a following which has made an active effort to understand it and connect with it. 

I feel that if I have learned anything from this course, it is that t a musical piece's status as a masterpiece or a failure depends heavily on its audience's perception and that in many cases the composers who have been successful in fixing their name and works in history have done so either by deeply touching their audience at a fundamental level, or by inciting their listeners to take a second listen and seek to form a connection on their own accord. Both approaches seem to be effective and I honestly cannot say that one approach is more acceptable than the other.