UM Honors Blog 2020-2021

      Because I struggled to understand the reading about the madrigals, I Googled Thomas Weelkes and listened to some of his pieces. I found a video of a group of women singing one of his madrigals called "The Nightingale." It is a very captivating piece, with multiple parts going at once, not in what you might call a direct harmony if that makes sense. Instead of each part coming together smoothly they call sort of do their own thing while still blending. I don't know if i'm making sense... I'm trying. All in all, I just love the cheerfulness of this piece and I recommend giving it a listen.  https://youtu.be/Hkb_mrWz95s 

 One of my favorite childhood movies is Ratatouille, and if you haven’t seen that movie, good luck trying to understand what I’m about to write. Those of us cultured people who have seen the masterpiece of a movie must remember the scene where Remmy first eats good food. There is like an explosion of colors, music, and the whole scene just changes for a split second. This scene affected child me so much that I used to close my eyes and appreciate my first bite of food on my plate mirroring Remmy. I know, I was one weird child. I still am weird. Anyways, I think that music has the same affect on our minds. Have you ever had that feeling when you’re listening to a song, and you are just whisked away to another world. You don’t feel the pressure and anxiety of your real life. You have a split second of music and a scenery change. Yeah, I got nothing else to say. I just thought that was a cool connection that popped in my head.  I commented on Emma Kate and Addison’s blogs.

 What do we listen to? How do we listen to it? What exactly is the music talking about? The madrigals    we've listened to and talked about in class have definitely brought out a change in music that our culture is not use to hearing. As a sit here and read and listen to the madrigals, it's weirdly soothing. Almost like you're listening to a ASMR for fun or when falling asleep. I don't think anyone else got that feeling, but yeah. Don't call me weird. It also reminded me of a noise that you may catch within a scary movie... like The Nun in the Conjuring universe (heads up, the movie isn't scary). Through high school, all I listened to was rap music. Getting grounded for a whole summer in 2016 allowed me to dive into music more and my best friend got me into collecting records. The amount of music I listen to in a record store or even finding cheap, $1 albums because I'm broke, opens up a massive world of music outside of the normal genre people tend to liste...

 The idea in the reading that stood out the most was the crossing of musical traditions in England and Italy. The article discusses how Italian music of the time period influenced the music of England. This shows how music can affect a culture and how music from one culture can affect another culture. It reminds me of how music can bring multiple cultures together. One culture can learn and gain knowledge from the music of another culture. Music can help us to learn about other cultures and teach us how other cultures think. It is important that we recognize the affect culture has on music and how in turn the music off certain culture can affect another one. There is so much to be learned from music. Music allows us to see other cultures and helps us to better understand how different cultures work and the customs they hold. This shows just how important music is to our everyday lives and shows us how much we can learn from music.  I commented on Lily Caswell’s and Caroline Tu...

 I'm gonna be honest. I have no clue what I just read. Me reading this was like a first grader trying to read. They can read the words, but they have no clue what they actually mean. This may as well have been in Greek because I retained mostly nothing from reading this. All of the music terms just completely went over my head, which made the task of reading and writing about Weelkes daunting. Despite the fact I could not really comprehend what I was reading, I did notice something. The one thing I thought is that I found it odd that he wrote so much music for the church. That alone isn't odd, but it's odd once you consider the fact that this guy was infamous for being a drunkard. Like, a drunkard writing music for the church? It just conflicts with the image I have in my head. On one hand, you have a drunk belligerent person, and on the other hand, you have a guy writing music that was deemed appropriate for the church. Neither of those images really click in my mind, so I...

 Am I gonna write on Hamilton and other Broadway shows? Absolutely. Did Jamie also write on Hamilton? Absolutely. Am I ashamed in any way? No, absolutely NOT. WORD PAINTING IS MY FAVORITE LYRICAL TROPE. Is that what it's called? A trope? Probably not. You get what I'm saying. English Madrigals were deliberately lighthearted and avoided emotionally intense topics, but retained musical puns such as sopranos singing the words "all alone" up high on the scale... all alone. Unlike English Madrigals, Broadway has no problem getting serious... but its music loves puns. The three songs that come to my head straight away are Watch What Happens (Newsies), One Day More (Les Miserables), and The World Was Wide Enough (you guessed it...Hamilton). In Watch What Happens, the character singing it is writing a news article, while the jaunty tune and tempo sound like a typewriter in the backgroud. In One Day More, a whole slew of characters are joining together on sides of a revolution...

 Something about Mr. Weelkes interested me very much. During this age of the Church, you have many people arguing what kind of music should be played in Church. The older generation holds more closely to hymns while the younger generation tends to enjoy more modern, contemporary worship. Although, this description is not strict obviously, it is still a debate that happens within the Church. I think we can learn something from Thomas Weelkes and his music. He was not tied down to one style of music, but his music was very diverse in the style in which he wrote it.  Weelkes was focused on the quality of the content he produced and that is what the Church should be focused. When there is quality in music, and it worships the Lord the way it is meant to, then that music is something to be accepted. (Disclaimer: I know this is only my opinion) I commented on Isabelle and Lily's blog posts.