An Alpine Symphony Analysis

Classical music has been existing for over a millennia, helping people express themselves in many ways, whether religiously, through respect, or for entertainment. Classical music has personally helped me relax from a stressful day and helped calm and stimulate my mind before an important exam or paper. For this assignment, I listened to the classical concert provided to us, an Alpine Symphony, created by Richard Strauss, by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Several years ago, I had the honor of traveling to Europe, specifically to the Alpine mountains in Germany, so this helped me visualize the music and although I could not attend this performance, my past experiences helped me remember the great experiences I had in Europe and helped me put myself in his shoes and where he got his inspiration for this piece. As being an hour long and unfortunately not being able to be present at the concert, it was hard to focus and compare the several pieces organized in this concert, although some pieces did jump out at me. Because I did not attend this concert live, I cannot describe the experience and how it was like, but I can imagine that it would be very serene sounding and a truly awesome experience. The two pieces from this concert, “Dangerous Moments” and “Thunder and Tempest, Descent” sounded very nostalgic, like both of them could be created and put into an older cartoon TV show. I chose both of these pieces, mostly because they sounded like anything could happen next, very sudden. Personally, I enjoy dissonant and more rough texture, but soothing and “flowing” textures are entertaining as well. For the first piece that I will analyze, it will be “Dangerous Moments”. This first video listed below reminds me of an antagonist cartoon character, that includes a rough texture, including emotions like emotional peril and insecurity, which is described to be the “second climbing theme” of the concert. This piece consistently increases volume and tempo as the piece progresses. For the second video, it is somewhat difficult to find different videos to compare the piece, but the second piece did sound a bit louder than the first one in regards to tone and texture. Although these videos are mostly the same, it is interesting to think about how people have very similar recordings given the complexity of this concert and its various pieces. The second piece that I will analyze is called Thunder and Tempest, Descent, a somewhat similar piece to “Dangerous Moments” in regards to tone and texture. As described by Strauss, “Thunder and Tempest, Descent” includes the largest amount of instruments in this composed piece, which includes a thunder machine that helps amplify the sound of the terror and thunder, bringing chaos until the resolution a few pieces later in the concert. This piece is composed of many storm sounds with synthesized sounds, which was very surprising given that this was composed in the early 20th century, that German society had the specific technology or innovation. Upon further research, I learned that in modern performances they used synthesized sounds with more modern technology. This piece originally used the instruments of woodwinds, pizzicato strings, and brass with the key of B minor until the transition into the next piece, “Sunset”, which shows to be a more soothing and relaxing sound, compared to the more sudden, rough sounding piece as this passage is. Throughout this piece, several moments into the piece, the storm of music begins to cease after multiple sudden sounds of thunder and raindrops. In these two videos that I have provided below, there is actually a difference between the two videos. In the first one and at the beginning, you only can hear the surface of the piece, such as the piano, providing repeating chaotic pattern, very similar to the popular piece, “Flight of the Bumblebee”, composed by Rimsky Korsakov. In the second video, you can hear the lower pieces such as the lower frequency in the first section. This piece as it continues sounds more and more like a heroic, medieval piece, showing a victory and warmth, but then goes back to a sense of chaos and doom moments later. This piece definitely shows it’s obscure consistency, with soft, flowing texture transitioning into a rough, hurried one in the process.

As for the “live concert” experience compared to the YouTube videos I have provided below, I did enjoy the specific videos more than the whole concert, because I could focus on the specific parts that I enjoyed, including the ones that I described above. With both of the videos being pre-recorded, it is difficult to compare both of these aspects of one being “live”, but many of us are in the same situation. As I observed the concert pre-recorded, however, I did notice some specific details that would give me a more “real” experience, such as the emotions of the conductor and the instrumentalists. Their facial expressions helped me pay attention, because they were very serious and composed, as they should be. The small amount of happiness that the conductor showed and although we did not see the faces of the audience, I could imagine that they were in awe as well as having a great time. The close-ups on the video provided on the instruments show the audience that the instrumentalists take their job very seriously and obviously look like they are enjoying themselves. Given this video, it looks like the location of the concert is very large and spacious, with myself imagining how the music resonates through the concert hall. This video also shows me how much work each individual musician played in this concert had put in to perform for the, looks like thousands of people listening and enjoying the loud and soft, smooth and rough, or unified and disunite music throughout this performance.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this assignment and it opened up more choices for my musical options. Once again, although I only had the chance to virtually participate in this assignment, given my past experiences in participating in music performing opportunities in my past, I got to visualize how it would actually be and how I would actually react to the different parts of the performance. Because music has been in my life since as long as I can remember, it seems to be somewhat easier to visualize how this would come into existence if I had the chance to participate and attend a concert like or similar to this. Although classical music, including concerts and performances such as this one, can be sometimes boring and have the “lack of entertainment”, I believe that everyone should give it the “benefit of the doubt” because since I first listened to classical music, this type of music helped me interpret other types of music even better since it is one of the most “most critiqued” type of music since it has been around for many years. And since it has been around for a long time, there are very many variations of classical music and although I have been associated with it all my life, I began to appreciate it over the years and with this class in general.