Being a former trumpet player, I found much of the first piece of music rather boring. It just lacked the brass sound that I love. The second and third pieces fully brought out the crisp brass sound and even highlighted the strength of the sound. I recall one of the best parts of playing any piece is to be able to gradually play louder and louder, allowing the music to grow in intensity and fill up a room. It invigorates you with power and makes you feel unstoppable. Although I no longer play, the pieces brought back the memories of the days I played.
Another thing I had noted was the immensity of the chorus. We had once talked about the ability of the human voice to completely fill the room when we had gone to the opera, but the chorus at Carnegie composed of at least 50 different people was deafening loud. There is such great power to the human voice. It was clearly the dominating sound throughout the final piece (of course the translations also made the song paint a clearer picture of what the song is showing). It might just be my youth drawing me to the loudness of the brass and chorus but I usually always associate loudness with power (sometimes jubilee and celebration) in a piece of music.
I had also found it very interesting that one of the pieces we had heard was at one point lost for 200 years and was found only days before the composer’s works were being collected to be made into a book. Coincidence or not?
Hi Kevin,
What an interesting correlation between loudness and power that you brought up. In a sense, loudness does relate to power in that being louder requires more energy, more internal power. But, with regards to being perceived powerful by others due to loudness, I think that that argument has some merit to it. There is something about receiving an earful of pure loud noise – whether orchestrated or not – that ignites the senses. This overwhelming takeover of the senses, then, makes us acknowledge the power of the entity that delivers it.