Music vs Writing (Part I)

We have been doing genre analysis all these while in class. So I guess we are pretty sure what a genre is by now. Just in case you are still confused, let me define it once again. According to dictionary.com, genre is defined as "a class or category of artistic endeavor having a particular form, content, technique, or the like" or "style". To me, genre is about the social expectation of what an "item" is supposed to look like. At the beginning of this semester, I always got so confused by the word "genre" in the context of writing. So I have my own little secret of trying to remember it (not really a secret though). :)

I took a class called "Music Appreciation" in my former college before I got transferred here. Just to clarify, I'm not really a "musical" person (not sure if this is the right word) and I don't play any musical instrument. Although I always wanted to learn how to play at least one instrument, I failed all the time. :( The music notes are just so hard for me although I was taught how to recognize the notes in the music class. So why was I still taking the class? The reason is simple: to fulfill the distribution. :) But today, I'm glad that I took the class as it was really a fun class and the lecturer was just very interactive with students. I love the class also because I started to appreciate music more since then and I could apply the knowledge that I learned in that class even in a writing class.

So without digressing too much, what's genre in music and how is it related to the assignment that we did on analyzing some scholarly papers and short academic writing?

In the music class, I learned about the musical periods since 1100s (Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and Romantic) and some histories about the prominent figures in music during those days (eg: Mozart, Beethoven, J.S. Bach and etc). Also, I learned a variety of genres in music, such as opera, concerto, orchestra, sonata, symphony, and etc. In some parts of the exams in this class, I was actually asked to identity the genre, the texture, the tempo, the mood, the period it was produced, and the musical instrument used in the music by just listening to some classical pieces. This was really challenging. In order to prepare for the exams, I had listened to the same piece of music over and over again. Imagine, there was not just one piece, but more than 30 pieces of music that we were required to sort of "memorize" their elements (ie. genre, texture, etc). What made it worse is that they are not some modern music pieces, but they are pieces from those ancient periods! This was once my nightmare when I was still not used to them.

However, not all pieces that I learned are dull. The following piece is one of my favorites:

Just in case you are interested to know the elements of this piece of music. (Was trying very hard to remember what I learned in the class)

Genre: Sonata

Texture: Polyphonic (multiple voices at one time)

Tempo: Fast

Period: Baroque period

Instrument: Organ

Mood: Eerie

Another piece of my favorite:

So now you might have known a little bit of genre in music. I will discuss more about the relationship between music and writing in the next post.

Till then.