The Music Of Life Foundation is a not for Profit organisation That Offers Opportunities to Musically gifted children with disabilities and special needs to be trained professionally and to perform in concerts together with outstanding classical musicians. Children are fully integreted into performances , playing as members of the orchestra and singing with the professional choirs.
One of the many things I enjoy about teaching at the U of A is the ability to watch the trends, fashions, and social interacti0n of today's youth.

In this morning's music 101 lecture, we were finishing up with the late renaissance, including in-depth discussions about the madrigal. I explaned to the class how the secular music of this time was intended for just pure entertainment - keeping in mind that we are hundreds of years away frim the ipod or any personal music device at this time.

It got me thinking how much does the avarage student rely on music in thir lives. So I did a careful study which I believe is to be to within 2% of accuracy. Ok, so what I really did was, on my walk across campus to find my wife and our car at the end of the day, I counted how many students walked past me with headphones on by the way - why do peopel wear God-awful-huge-ugly headphones out in publi. The ear buds are far more attractive folks. I determined that approximately every fifth person I passed had some kind of music device playing in or on their ears, and for the record, every seventh person was talking on a call phone, others were walking with friends and chatting - but very few people werw walking alone without a phone or music device. From this I determine that music is a very important part of everyone's daily life.

I grew up in a house where there was always live music. From the sounds of instruments being practiced between my sister and I this included lots of piano, voice, guitar and a brief stief of trumpetand flute. On top of this,every family gathering ended around the piano with singing, not always in tune, but it was live music - not the same genre of music discussed earlier in this post, but certainly the experience must have been pretty close. I'm afraid that this tradition is lost in most of us now thanks tothe stereo. I have to admit, I'm a bit of a sterophile. I buy high quality components and speakers,and I spend a lot of time (and money) finding the right fit for me, and as i type this, I am listening to recorded music in my living room.

Many people have asked me what best equipment is for sound my new answer is going to be. Your Ears Why do we spend so much money trying to recreate the sound of a live performance, when the best place to hear a live performance, is at a live performance.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, Western Europe entered a time known as The Dark Ages - aperiod when invading hordes of Vandals, Huns, and Visigoths overran Europe. These years were marked by constant warfare, the absence of a Holy Roman Emperor, and the virtual disappearance of urban life. Over the next next nine centuries, the newly emerging Christian Church came to dominate Europe, administering justice, instigating "Holy" Crusades against the East, establishing Universities, and generally dictating the destiny of music, art, and literature. It was during this time that Pope Gregory I is generally believed to have collected and codified the music known as Gregorian Chant which was the approved music of the Church. Much later, the University at Notre Dame in Paris saw the creation of a new kind of music called organum.Secular music was performed throughout Europe by the troubadours and trouveres of France. And it was during these "Middle Ages" that Western culture saw the appearance of the first great name in music, Guillaume de machaut.

Generally considered to be from ca.1420 to 1600, the Renaissance which literally means rebirth was a time of great cultural awakening and a flowering of the arts, letters, and sciences throughout Europe. With the rise of humanism, sacred music began for the first time to break free of the confines of the Church, and a school of composers trained in the Netherlands mastered the art of polyphony in their settings of sacred music. One of the early masters of the Flemish style was Josquin des Prez. These polyphonic traditions reached their culmination in the unsurpassed works of Giovanni da palestrina. Of course, secular music thrived during this period, and instrumental and dance music was performed in abundance, if not always written down. It was left for others to collect and notate the wide variety of irrepressible instrumental music of the period. The late Renaissance also saw in England the flourishing of the English madrigal, the best known of which were composed by such masters as John Dowland, William Byrd, Thomas Morley and others.

Named after the popular ornate architectural style of the time, the Baroque period (ca.1600 to 1750) saw composers beginning to rebel against the styles that were prevalent during the High Renaissance. This was a time when the many monarchies of Europe vied in outdoing each other in pride, pomp and pageantry. Many monarchs employed composers at their courts, where they were little more than servants expected to churn out music for any desired occasions. The greatest composer of the period, was such a servant. Yet the best composers of the time were able to break new musical ground, and in so doing succeeded in creating an entirely new style of music.It was during the early part of the seventeenth century that the genre of opera was first created by a group of composers in Florence, Italy, and the earliest operatic masterpieces were composed by Claudio monteverdi. The instrumental concerto became a staple of the Baroque era, and found its strongest exponent in the works of the Venetian composer Harpsichord music

achieved new heights, due to the works of such masters as Domenico scarlatti and others. Dances became formalized into instrumental suites and were composed by virtually all composers of the era. But vocal and choral music still reigned supreme during this age, and culminated in the operas and oratorios of German-born composer.

From roughly 1750 to 1820, artists, architechts, and musicians moved away from the heavily ornamented styles of the Baroque and the Rococo, and instead embraced a clean, uncluttered style they thought reminiscent of Classical Greece. The newly established aristocracies were replacing monarchs and the church as patrons of the arts, and were demanding an impersonal, but tuneful and elegant music. Dances such as the minuet and the gavotte were provided in the forms of entertaining serenades and divertimenti.At this time the Austrian capital of Vienna became the musical center of Europe, and works of the period are often referred to as being in the Viennese style. Composers came from all over Europe to train in and around Vienna, and gradually they developed and formalized the standard musical forms that were to predominate European musical culture for the next several decades. A reform of the extravagance of Baroque opera was undertaken byChristoph von Gluch. Johann Stamitz contributed greatly to the growth of the orchestra and developed the idea of the orchestral symphony. The Classical period reached its majestic culmination with the masterful symphonies, sonatas, and string quartets by the three great composers of the Viennese school During the same period, the first voice of the burgeoning Romantic musical ethic can be found in the music of Viennese composer.

As the many socio-political revolutions of the late eighteenth-century established new social orders and new ways of life and thought, so composers of the period broke new musical ground by adding a new emotional depth to the prevailing classical forms. Throughout the remainder of the nineteenth-century (from ca. 1820 to 1900), artists of all kinds became intent in expressing their subjective, personal emotions. "Romanticism" derives its name from the romances of medieval times long poems telling stories of heroes and chivalry, of distant lands and far away places, and often of unattainable love. The romantic artists are the first in history to give to themselves the name by which they are identified.The earliest Romantic composers were all born within a few years of each other in the early years of the nineteenth century. These include the great German masters the greatest pianistic showman in history, the Hungarian composer

Franz Liszt.During the early nineteenth century, opera composers such as turned to German folk stories for the stories of their operas, while the Italians looked to the literature of the time and created what is known. Later in the century, the field of Italian opera was dominated bywhile German opera was virtually monopolized. During the nineteenth century, composers from non-Germanic countries began looking for ways in which they might express the musical soul of their homelands. Many of these nationalist composers turned to indigenous history and legends as plots for their operas, and to the popular folk melodies and dance rhythms of their homelands as inspiration for their symphonies and instrumental music. Others developed a highly personal harmonic language and melodic style which distinguishes their music from that of the Austro-Germanic traditions.The continued modification and enhancement of existing instruments, plus the invention of new ones, led to the further expansion of the symphony orchestra throughout the century. Taking advantage of these new sounds and new instrumental combinations, the second half of the nineteenth-century created richer and ever larger symphonies, ballets, and concertos. Two of the giants of this period are the German-born and the great Russian melodist.

By the turn of the century and for the next few decades, artists of all nationalities were searching for exciting and different modes of expression. Composers such explored unusual and unorthodox harmonies and tonal schemes. French composer Claude Debussy was fascinated by Eastern music and the whole-tone scale, and created a style of music named after the movement in French painting called Impressionism. Hungarian composerBela bartok continued in the traditions of the still strong Nationalist movement and fused the music of Hungarian peasants with twentieth century forms. Avant-garde composers such as explored the manipulation of rhythms rather than the usual melodic/harmonic schemes. The tried-and-true genre of the symphony, albeit somewhat modified by this time, attracted such masters gave full rein to his manipulation of kaleidoscopic rhythms and instrumental colors throughout his extremely long and varied career.

How we speak, our voices, the list could go on! You hear it when the birds chirp, your little brother whistles off-key, a train passes by it's music!
Playing an instrument is beautiful, and has a beautiful sound when you play it correctly. If you are one of those people, like me, that listens to the orchestra, closes your eyes and is swept away by the music, you will understand what I'm talking about. If not, take time to listen to the music, it's fantastic!
Before I make a poem out of this, I asked our fellow whyvillians what they think about music and if they play an instrument or sing.

Music influences our lives so much They have happy music, mellow, shy, depressing music, etc. I don't even want to think where we'd be without music!
Rockin Good Year 2009!!!