A Live Music Concert: The Importance Of Music

Music cannot be felt or understood unless you experience it in person. You wouldn’t hear the same song through headphones as you would in a live concert. For this reason, I attended a live music concert to better understand the importance of music and apply what I learned in my introductory music course to the performance. I attended a recital of original compositions by Taiwanese composers that had arrangements of Taiwanese folk songs. It took place on Wednesday, November 15, 2017, in the Art Gallery of Marlboro Hall. The three Taiwanese performers were Shu-Ting Yao, Huai-En Tsai, and Yufen Chou. The music they performed was The Temple and Religious Procession by Ma Shui-Long, Formosan Dance by Jiang Wen-Ye, Mong by Wei-Ling Chen, and an arrangement

The song is about how he grew up near the temple, as a result it was named The Temple. According to Pi-Lin Ni, Shui-Long had a very strong connection to his Taiwanese culture. Therefore, he composed it so that different musical elements would imitate objects that were related to his infancy in Taiwan. The slow tempo, in the beginning, imitates the sounds of wooden blocks and Qing’s that are used by monks in temples. Pi-Lin states that the “quarter-note staccatos indicate the Chinese blocks, whereas the interval of the major seventh implies the Qing” in Shui-Long’s

In the beginning, there are repetitive ostinatos with high pitches. Pitch is the relative highness or lowness we hear in a sound. He was able to layer high pitches with low pitches to create a Taiwanese melody. The composition has a wide range of pitches. After the beginning, there are dynamic changes. Dynamics are described as the degree of loudness or softness that we hear in a sound. Shui-Long starts to gradually get louder towards the halfway through the piece. This is called crescendo. He emphasizes the crescendos on the high notes. Timbre, or tone color, is the quality of sound that distinguishes one instrument from another. The contrasting sounds and continuity of this piece give it a unique timbre. It has a rich tone color because of the different layers of sounds. In music, beats are “regular, recurrent pulsations that divide music into equal units of time.” The song has really slow, irregular beats in the beginning. On the sheet music, it appears to have four beats per measure. It has a time signature, which is a quadruple meter. A quadruple meter has four beats, where each beat is a quarter note long. The organization of beats in a steady order is known as the meter. Like I’ve mentioned before the high pitched notes were being played louder to accent them. An accent is a note that is emphasized by being played louder than the rest of the notes. Syncopation was abundant in this piece because he placed the low