Music as Substance and Form in Grace Notes
In the novel Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty, Catherine's growth as an artist through the story provides both substance and form to the story.
Early on in Catherine's life, she was taught and influenced by the people close to her. Miss Bingham was her first formal teacher. She taught Catherine things she seemed to have known beforehand: "Miss Bingham says it's all inside her head and all she has to do is draw it out" (99). Miss Bingham also gave Catherine her first manuscript jotter, taking her on her way to becoming a composer. Catherine's family was also a big influence. Granny Boyd taught Catherine songs they would sing in "the rounds of the kitchen" (145). In contrast to Miss Bingham and Granny Boyd, it seems as if her father wanted to have more control over her music interest. When listening to the Lambeg drums, her father called it "Sheer bloody bigotry" (258), yet Catherine thought it interesting with the complex rhythms. The strongest influences on Catherine, as with most children, come at an early age, and for Catherine this all happens in her home town.
There are also outside influences on Catherine's development as an artist. Catherine first saw Huang Xiao Gang at a composition workshop at the university. Huang talked about "pre-hearing and inner hearing" (33), and other ways of thinking of music in very non-western methods. Catherine remembers the 'pre-hearing' and 'inner hearing' quite a few times later, when she has ideas about music. Catherine also learns while visiting the composer Anatoli Melnichuck in Kiev. She does not actually learn directly from Melnichuck, but learns about things when she is there. When she visits the Refectory church she hears the bells in the bell tower, making a reverberating "Tintinnabulation" (124). Catherine as well hears the monks in the church singing. The singing came without warning, "it was not sacred singing - there was a lightness to it" (125). The singing there at the Refectory church reminded her of Granny Boyd singing 'The Bell Doth Toll'. The outside influences in Catherine's life gave some contrast and some interesting aspects to her music.
The influences and teachings in her life all come together to create Vernicle, which is played for the BBC at the end of the novel. Her music comes in two parts, like "the bilateral symmetry of a scallop shell" (273).
In Richard Russo’s Empire Falls, he tells us about the lives of the some of the residents of a dying New England mill town. Miles Roby, a lifetime resident and father that runs the local eatery, the Empire Grill, for Francine Whiting, the matriarch of Empire Falls. They have known each other for a long time. Miles’s mother, Grace Roby had an affair with C.B. Whiting the owner of the textile mill, and Mrs. Whiting’s husband. This set off a chain of events that eventually led to Francine promising to leave Miles the Empire Grill in her will.
The Grace That Keeps This World, by Tom Bailey, is an enthralling novel about the Hazen family who have lived in Lost Lake their whole lives. In this novel Kevin Hazen, a young man of 19, is searching for where he belongs in the world and in his own family. He wants more for his life than the life of survival that his parents have lived their whole lives. The story of the Hazen family is centered around the first day of deer season. For the Hazens, this hunt is more than just a sport. They use the meat of every deer they shoot to help them survive through the winter.
Indeed, when Clara’s life is examined independently of her father and husband specifically, it is a rather difficult one. Her mother left Clara when she was five, and her father, Friedrich Wieck, a controlling and dictatorial but musically informed...
In the preceding poem, one can see the artistic style come through her composition. The best representation of that particular idea comes from the author Donald Thackrey when he says:
Religion has been an important part of man’s life. Man has allowed religion to control and influence his life in many different ways, affecting both his behavior and his actions. So its not surprising that music, one of man’s earliest expressive forms, has also been influenced by religion. Religion has had an effect on man’s music all throughout history, from the early Egyptians to even now. So it is only natural that Western music should also have been affected by religion. Western music, and its development by composers, has been strongly influenced by the Christian religion, especially in the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods. The music in these periods laid the foundation for all the different types of music we enjoy today.
In Chapter I of the novel, Catherine is stereotyped as a person who “never could learn or understand anything before she was taught.” This helps to paint a picture of Catherine being helpless and dependent for extended emphasis or exaggeration of the trials she must go through to reach maturity and independence. For if Catherine learns through the guidance and teaching of others, her gullibility in what she is taught is heightened, therefore she may be susceptible to believe everything that she hears or reads. She takes everyone and everything at face value. Catherine must learn to correct these assumptions by distinguishing between the real world and the fictional world of literature, and also by learning through experience the difficulties of ordinary life.
The Dictionary of the Accademia della Crusca, dating from 16th century Italy, defines grace as "belleza... che rapisce altrui ad amore." Grace is beauty which seduces one unto love. Grace is the prayer before nourishment, it is the passing of power through blood, it is a classical muse, it is a verb, it is liberation, it is a head-ransom, it is a gazelle, it is simplicity, it is complexity, it is sanctifying, it is controversial, it is desired, it is metrical, it is ubiquitous, it is rare, it is actual. "Grace is in all, yet beyond all," quotes a medieval anchoress. According to Castiglione, grace springs from "that virtue opposite to affectation," as an unconscious extension of a certain je ne sais quoi within the soul. Grace is the nature of language, of number, of beat, of silence. Grace is pervasively elusive.
Responses to Amazing Grace Amazing Grace is a legendary song” published in 1779”(www.princeton.edu/-achaney/tmve/wiki100/docs/Amazing-Grace.html) that is also a poem where there are verses in this poem that suggest that the composer John Newton (1725-1807) was going through a pivotal point in his life and he felt that by writing these harmonic verses in rhythmic metaphors could captivate and inspire not only those that read “Amazing Grace” but especially everyone that listened to its meaning. Conviction can come at a time when it seems you are most likely going to die from an act of God, and all the wrong that someone has done becomes a consciously enormous burden when they start to consider what the after life may have as punishment or reward. There are many different responses to this poem. Most of the responses are positive, but when you look at the author John Newton’s life you will start begin to understand the gist of what he is saying and the meaning behind them.
The first verse concludes with, was “blind but now I see.” Jesus stated, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” (KJV John 9:5) This stands out because those that choose to remain in the wickedness of Satan, are unsighted in this world filled with sin and corruption. Followers of Jesus know that he conveys light, truth, and grace. Jesus transports light for the ability of salvation and life. Altogether there are a total of six verses of Amazing Grace composed by Newton and they all maintain a Christian worldview. The style of John Newton’s message carries a rich lyrical beauty. Amazing Grace has a sense and is empathetic to everyone, or plausibility. NPR commented, “When Newton put the internal rhyme “amazing grace” together,
For decades there has been a debate on student athletes and their drive to succeed in the classroom. From the very beginning of organized college level athletics, the goal to want to succeed in athletics has forced students to put academics to the back burner. In spite of the goal to want to succeed over a hundred years of attempts to check limits of intercollegiate athletic programs on colleges' academic standards still seems to struggle to this day. This brings to surface one of the most asked questions in sports, “What effect does college sports have on academics and economics?” Herbert D. Simons, Derek Van Rheenen, and Martin V. Covington, authors of “Academic Motivation and the Student Athlete” researched the topic on whether athletics and academics benefit each other. Bryan Flynn, the author of “College Sports vs. Academics” poses the question “Should institutions of higher learning continue to involve themselves in athletic programs that often turn out to be virtual arms races for recruiting talented players who bring big money and prestige, but put academics to the back burner?” Although both authors agree that sports have an impact on an athlete’s academics, the focus of their argument differs.
The Draw of Secular Music I think every Christian should still listen to secular music, even if the messages aren’t biblical or even moral. Whoa! Shocking statement! Let me explain. Each person, Christian and non-Christian has a heart-cry that needs to be expressed through some form of worship, music or otherwise.
It is impossible to assume that music and religion are not linked in some way or another in any society or culture on earth. This is not to say that all religions embrace the use of music in their worship to their god or gods, in fact it is quiet the opposite. While some religions use music to praise and worship, other religions believe music diverges the attention of followers away from their god, and even see it as a tool of the devil.
Throughout the ages, literature and her artists have given anyone the chance to be something they are not: a princess, a pirate, lovers like Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, anything imaginable, or “call me Ishmael.” Perhaps one of the greatest of these artists is so underrated and misunderstood, but belongs to a category that can only be described as brilliant. Emily Bronte employs powerful characterization and grotesque imagery to manifest the fierce symbolism in the tragic love story that is Catherine and Heathcliff, in her novel Wuthering Heights.
Grace In order to completely understand the theology of grace. you have to take a look at Augustine, Aquinas, Luther. Rahner, Segundo, and Boff, and how they understood what. grace was.
...ile the pandemic will absolutely leverage the rate of financial development, structural alterations are furthermore expected to be one of the prime economic hallmarks of the AIDS pandemic (Arndt 427-449). The effect of the HIV/AIDS epidemic can be visualized by the overwhelming change in mortality rate of South Africans. The yearly number of mortalities from HIV increased distinctly between the years 1997, when about 316,559 people died, and 2006 when an estimated 607,184 people died ("HIV AIDS IN SOUTH AFRICA"). Those who are currently assuming the burden of the increase in mortality rate are adolescents and young adults. Virtually one-in-three females of ages 25-29, and over 25% of males aged 30-34, are currently living with HIV in South Africa (UNAIDS). The good news, thanks to better supply of ARV treatment, is that life-expectancy has risen vastly since 2005.