Essay reflections.
Writing about chamber music and Shostakovich. I love classical music. This is most likely because I spent so many years learning violin and being in string ensembles and orchestras. I have lots lots lots of ideas and things to write about. The hard part is writing all of this up in formal 'essay' language and relating all of this back to the Russian revolution, the war and how music is used in expressing his protest/support through his compositions, and how his own personal melancholy translates and influences his work. How this was against soviet ideals as it was not rousing and triumphant but challenged and expressed dissatisfaction against an anti-semetic regime by incorporating themes from Jewish gypsy music (its not exactly called that, but it might as well be) into his compositions. I want to compare him to a journalist, and talk about how his music is a social commentary of the events surrounding his life. How do I express in proper sentences the way he mixes traditional composition 'methods' such scherzi and sonata form together with quirky melodic aspects taken from Jewish folk music and incorporating Jewish influences, and in being based on two different traditions he creates something recognisable but at the same time a totally new and interesting composition.
I'm finding it difficult to write about the feelings being expressed through his music. Maybe its because I know just how much music can mean. But at the same time, this isn't something I can quote and back up with references, and thats the difficult thing, not to go off on a tangent and talk about how the music makes me feel personally. This is one of those essays where I had to spend time on, and not just read at my usual pace and whack out a few hundred words, it was time consuming in that I needed to hear the pieces of music in order to be able to write about the subject, but I kept on getting lost in it.
There's so much you can say a piece of music makes you feel but its not what I need to be writing. I want to somehow bring into my argument the way that there are certain phrases in particular pieces that makes me think of uncertainty and persecution. How certain movements seem like interludes and makes me think of a bleak, grey, war torn landscape scattered with rubble and the focus characters in the scene picking their way over and across it to their destination. How others make me think of a small band of men making their way jauntily through a field, towards/away from eastern european taverns, in tiny rural communities, like scenes from Stella Artois adverts. How do you write about an underlying sense of death and hopelessness, glossed over by a sense of irony and putting on a brave face.
I just thought that maybe if I wrote down all those things I randomly feel about this piece of work informally and not have to change and edit it for someone to mark and grade me not on my thinking, but in how I've fitted all my thoughts together, then I can step back and review what I really want this essay to say and how to say it properly.
But all I want to do is look for a violin teacher, buy cameo jewelery and try revise for my driving theory test tomorrow morning. Pants.
I'm finding it difficult to write about the feelings being expressed through his music. Maybe its because I know just how much music can mean. But at the same time, this isn't something I can quote and back up with references, and thats the difficult thing, not to go off on a tangent and talk about how the music makes me feel personally. This is one of those essays where I had to spend time on, and not just read at my usual pace and whack out a few hundred words, it was time consuming in that I needed to hear the pieces of music in order to be able to write about the subject, but I kept on getting lost in it.
There's so much you can say a piece of music makes you feel but its not what I need to be writing. I want to somehow bring into my argument the way that there are certain phrases in particular pieces that makes me think of uncertainty and persecution. How certain movements seem like interludes and makes me think of a bleak, grey, war torn landscape scattered with rubble and the focus characters in the scene picking their way over and across it to their destination. How others make me think of a small band of men making their way jauntily through a field, towards/away from eastern european taverns, in tiny rural communities, like scenes from Stella Artois adverts. How do you write about an underlying sense of death and hopelessness, glossed over by a sense of irony and putting on a brave face.
I just thought that maybe if I wrote down all those things I randomly feel about this piece of work informally and not have to change and edit it for someone to mark and grade me not on my thinking, but in how I've fitted all my thoughts together, then I can step back and review what I really want this essay to say and how to say it properly.
But all I want to do is look for a violin teacher, buy cameo jewelery and try revise for my driving theory test tomorrow morning. Pants.