Beethoven - Burned in Ash, Born again with Music

Recently i had been talking a lot about how i like Mozart more than Beethoven (which is true). Somehow I realized the more i tried to brag about Mozart, i found out that obliviously i have developed an empathy towards Beethoven.

I never really like Beethoven's music, simply because lots of his piano works are in my biased opinion, harsh, bang-y, unsophisticated, confusing, and uncivilized (though i have to admit that his orchestral works are brilliant). But I see now that it has always been my prejudice towards Mozart's music that creates this sentiment. Now I see Beethoven's suffering, his scream, his rebellious nature, and his passion.

If you are a dancer, what do you feel when you lost your feet?
If you are an artist, what do you feel when you are blind?

Well, Beethoven literally suffered from the cruelest curse ever laid upon him. Just listen to his symphony no. 9, where the famous choir song "Ode to Joy" simply blasts us away from earth to heaven, a proclamation that God is the Greatest, where it depicts thousands of angels singing on the stairs to heaven glorifying God Almighty! Such a music, and yet Beethoven can only hear one pitch ever since he was totally deaf!

In one of my conversation with my friend, he quoted one of Beethoven's complain:" God, why do You torture me by giving an ability to create such a beautiful music, but yet You took away my only mean of enjoying it?!!"

Apart from his deafness, nothing good ever really came to him. He was rejected by all of his beloved ones, he had bad relationships with all of his acquaintances, his nephew ran his money away, he never really had a permanent living place.

At last, I still love Mozart, but i'm now humbled. Coming to realize that there existed a man who stood his ground enduring all this worst possible mental torment to persist in expressing himself in the depth of his music, I have finally understood that indeed his music speaks of his life. This man is indeed admirable!

Below is the link to the documentary about Beethoven's life:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67pKZrxgv4Y

30+ Days Camp Started!

Well2, if not for my injury at my right hand, i won't even be here to write anything. Seems it's a blessing in disguise, but, oh well...

About my injury, haha, pretty stupid. The way I have been playing piano all this time has been wrong, seriously. Ironically, it's mostly because of my own seamlessly obnoxious sense of perfection. It's just me; I mean, I always try to get the best out of everything I am doing. I tried to develop strong fingers, but in the end I developed a destroyed hand.

People around me mostly didn't realize about how severe it was, until recently when I had to postpone my piano jury because of the pain.

I felt depressed. As a musician, his/her hands are his/her treasure, their asset, their "LIFE". For the first time in my life, i encountered a serious thwart in my path. Lucky for me, when i went to a orthopedist, he said i needed to rest, and he said i would still be able to play.

Well, with the jury postponed, I had to returned to sg early, while everyone in my school is enjoying their early-planned holidays. For what? People asked. "Practicing, lol," I grunted. "What the hell?" they asked, shocked. After explaining everything, they will just shook their heads, sighing because of me.

I can't stay in pgp for now, as i don't pay for the vacation stay, and nor does my scholarship. Yeah, so now i stay in my buddy's house, Jonathan Shin's.

FUUNNNN!!!
His father is crazy (funny, i mean, hh), as well as his son, jojo (that sounds like mojo, lol). The first dinner I had in his house was meal with three hundred spoon of laughter. Buahakakakaka...

And this will go on until the nus orientation week starting 13 jul (I guess), and that means more than one month.. hhh, yay..

Article Response

Hi everybody, I'm back!

Well, I found a very interesting educational article as I browsed through the internet, and I decided to write a response to it. The title is "Learning to Live with a Learning Disability" by Christine Harrell.

Here is the link:

http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=2633726

The main idea of this article is the importance of finding an appropriate learning method for those with learning disabilities. In the first half of this article, Ms. Christine explained about perpetual learning in one's life, and how a person still learns something once he/she leaves the school. In the second half of the article, Ms. Christine emphasized the importance of learning adaptation for a person with a learning disability.

I definitely agree with Ms. Christine's argument that what we learned back in school is simply to imbue us with the skill to thrive in life. We may not need to "calculate a hypotenuse, know what the inside of a frog looks like, or know what year the War of 1812 was fought" after we left school, as Ms. Christine argued. But all those "unusable" informations we learned in school, in my opinion, were indeed taught to us to enhance our skills in processing informations and applying knowledges into our lives.

For those with learning disabilities, the challenges in life seem formidable, as they have to try harder to overcome the obstacles caused by their body condition. But actually, what they really have to do is to adapt with their own weakness and to find different learning strategies that can benefit themselves despite their body condition. This holds true for their whole lives, as one keeps learning new things throughout even when he/she is old. Thus, appropriate learning systems are required for those with learning disabilities in order for them to survive their own lives.

Ms. Christine believed that someone with learning disability should find the perfect school, as "many public school systems are not up to the task, teaching coping strategies instead of real learning skills". She also argued that "students (with learning disabilities) don't need to learn to cope; they need to learn to thrive". I don't really agree with this, because adaptation skills are crucial in one's life. In my opinion, teaching coping strategies is fine as long as it enhances one's learning ability. It is true that those with learning disabilities should have their own learning systems, but that doesn't mean that they have to move to another school. In third world countries where the economical condition is not as good, moving school will be a painful task. It is a teacher's job to cope with such students, not to discriminate them from the others.

By and large, I really agree with the main idea of this article, as we know that learning is also one of human rights. All people, including those with learning disabilities should have a proper education throughout their lives. Besides, what is more amazing that to see one with a learning disorder succeed in their own lives?

Music genres by composers in classical music

Reference: Wikipedia

Music as we know today is often categorized into many genres. We are obviously familiar with music genres such as jazz music, pop music, RnB music, rock music, and classical music. Each genre has a unique form of sound organization, and hence, one can easily tell the difference between one genre and another. But that's not the case in classical music. When we are dealing with classical music, the variety of the genres becomes enormous. The reason is, classical music spanned for more than 4 centuries, and new forms of music kept emerging from time to time. As a result, now we have hundreds of classical music genres classified.

Despite its enormous variety, we can still track the growth of music genres from medieval era until now. In this blog, I'm trying to talk about music genres in each period of classical music. Let's start with Baroque period.

Baroque Period (1600 - 1750)

The widespread use of contrapuntal (counterpoint) technique in this era became a major feature of many keyboard, organ, vocal, and orchestral works. A significant music genre in this era that uses this technique is fugue. Johann Sebastian Bach is a composer who extensively wrote many fugues.

Another genre, Suites, also emerged. Suite in this period is an ordered set of dance-like pieces. Each of these pieces were named after a specific type of dance that flourished at that time. A standard set of a Suite consists of a Prelude, an Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, an Intermezzo, and a Gigue. Johann Sebastian Bach is also a prominent Suite composer.

Organ music were flourished with many virtuosic works such as Toccata and Fantasia.

Classical Period (1750 – 1820)

Moving from Baroque style to Classical style, composers in this era preferred a style which was more transparent and clear. They moved towards music with homophonic texture from music with layered polyphonic texture.

Two most important genres in this period are Symphony and Chamber music. Symphony is an orchestra work that consists of 3 or 4 movements, each with its own theme. Chamber music, on the other hand, is a kind of music that is written for a small group of instruments, for instance, a string quartet (which is prominent in classical period). Joseph Haydn is a prominent composer of both symphony and string quartet, and is known as the “father of Symphony” and the “father of string quartet”. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed over 40 symphonies throughout his life. In late classical period, Ludwig van Beethoven emerged with his nine symphonies, which has now become most performed works in the whole world.

Another prominent genre in this period is opera, with Mozart as the most important composer for it. Some of Mozart's most prominent operas are “the Marriage of Figaro”, “the Magic Flute”, “the Abduction of Seraglio”, and “Don Giovanni”.

A lot of piano works were as well composed with the invention of piano by Cristofori. Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven composed many piano sonatas.

Romantic Period (1815 – 1910)

In this period, music has moved towards a new style. Composers in this era sought to compose with a greater and richer harmonic range, and a freer style.

As a continuation of Classical music, some genres like symphony, sonata and opera remained prominent in Romantic period. In orchestral works such as symphonies, the orchestration expanded with the addition of instruments with lower range.

In this period, nationalism music as a music genre also appeared. Composers like Chopin, Liszt, composed pieces with regard to their own nationalities. Chopin, for example, composed many Mazurkas: a form of piano music that was written in the style of a Mazurka, a traditional dance form of Poland. Liszt, on the other hand, composed his famous Hungarian Rhapsodies.

Music in my life

Half a year passed since I was admitted to Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, and I have learned many things since then. My instructor and my mentor as well, Dr. Hecht, has been a magnificent role model for me in achieving my goals. He taught me everything I didn't know, and he knew exactly what I was weak at, and so he progressively monitored over my growth musically during past semester.

Every Monday evening, from 7 - 9 pm, we had a studio class, in which all students of Dr. Hecht were gathered in the building's concert hall, to listen to the student's of Dr. Hecht's choice performing on the stage. We were the only audience though, and the performance itself was just an experimental one, before the students got to the real 'thing'.

Each time I was in that hall, I felt my existence as a musician. When I listened to other's playing, I said to myself," I want to be like that." Especially whenever our beloved Abigail Sin, a young music prodigy, performed in the studio class, I always went through a state of 'trance'.

The sound of her playing ravished me and when I looked at the other students who were listening to her, I could see tears.

The studio class always brought me a new impetus every week, to work harder. I wanted to be able to play the piano at the same quality. I wanted to be the one whose playing can melt the audience's heart. And when I meditated through this, I realized, that this is what music is supposed to do: to touch people's heart.

Just think about it. We are all musical creature. Proof? Well, all of us have our own heartbeat, which is often rhythmical. Other than that, hm.., how many of us, right when we are reading this blog, are 'audiating' a song in our head, subconsciously? Also, singing, whistling, these two activities are done very frequently in our life, yet we often don't realize it when we are doing these activities. That just means that music has been part of our everyday life. It rooted so deeply in ourselves that sometimes we don't even know when it rings in our head...

Well, to me, music is my passion. I was born with it, I grew with it, laughed with it, cry with it. I just don't want to abandon it. Yes, it is a hard path to tread down as a musician, but as I have said above, I want to be a musician whose playing can touch people's heart. And so my journey goes on....

If you live for music, you will always be ready for it..

-Dr. Hecht