R.Murray Schafer’s composition was incredible. It awakened spontaneous emotions. At first I felt like it was all natural sounds so it sounded good. But then all of a sudden the vocals almost disappear and you also get this weird sound that almost sounds like somebody is screeching. It has a lot of unexpectedness to it. When the vocals reappear they are really high frequencies. So it’s almost as if the vocals jump at you. The vocals reach from low to high and that creates a sense of mysteriousness to the piece.
The word epitaph means eulogy, and eulogies are given at a death of a person. I was really curious why did the composer name it epitaph for moonlight? Was the composer suggesting that the moon is already dead?
I want to research more when the piece was composed and if it has any historical importance to it. Overall even though the word epitaph creates a sense of death lurking around the composition itself actually was really unusual is the sense that it provided a sense of easiness.
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHk_mnez4S4&feature=related
March 8, 2010
Fatimah Rafat
2 responses to “Epitaph for Moonlight (Investigation On Sound)”
Nancy
March 20th, 2010 at 04:19
What a great question — why did the composer call his piece “epitaph” — and the answer is just as interesting.
The piece was created for a youth choir as an ear-training and improvisation challenge, as part of a larger project in music education. It was written by Canadian composer R. Murray Shafer, who was participating in a project called “Composers in the Classroom”, in the late 60s, just after the American astronauts landed on the moon. Mr. Shafer realized that now that we have rocks from the moon in the Smithsonian Museum and pictures of its dusty surface, the moon will never again be the mysterious shining object in the night sky that poets had written about for ages. His “epitaph” was for the loss of the romantic ideal of the magic of moonlight.
He went to a group of seventh grade students (12-13 year olds) and asked them to make up words that sounded like they could describe moonlight. The kids came up with words like “shivaglowa”, and Mr. Shafer chose a few that he liked best to use as the text for this piece. The sheet music looks like a strange graph for a science experiment, because he created his own notation and pictures to describe the sounds he had in mind. It is up to the singers to make up their own notes in some sections of the piece.
Choirs in universities and communities throughout the country now perform this piece, and I wonder if those students love doing something so different.
Fatimah Rafat
April 18th, 2010 at 16:55
Thanks Nancy!!
I learnt a lot from your comment and I now know why the composer named it epitaph of moonlight.
I really like the composer’s view of moon and now I wouldnt be able to look at moon as a romantic shiny thing either .
Truly moon is just another thing that reflects of another body’s light. It doesnt provide us with its own light. By itself moon is nothing. But then again isn’t love something about finding yourself in other and learning from them and reflecting it in yourself. That way we can say that moon is in love with sun and it just reflects of its light. And without sun the moon can’t stand by itself. And thats what love is about, we can’t stand by ourselves without them.
Sorry I got sidetracked