How does music make me feel

The music I chose is the Meditation from Thais. Thais is an opera composed by Massenet. Mediation is an intermezzo between the ACT I and ACT II of Thais. Although I am not familiar with this opera, but I have heard this piece of music when I was very young. I think many people have heard this piece before, it is a famous violin solo music for concerts. The Meditation is the representative work of Massenet’s as well.

The form of this piece is very simple, is the ABA form. The composer wrote “Andante religioso” in the front of the score. With the limpid Arpeggio are companied, the violin solo play the theme lyrically at the beginning. This famous theme appears many times in the opera. This melody is very peaceful and expressive, it gives a feeling like a young girl is praying religiously. The composer made the violin to play higher register in order to represent this kind of feeling. The dynamic of this theme is piano.
The second part is different from the first part. The key changed from major to minor and there are many unexpected notes. The violin plays more powerful sound than before, because the dynamic is not the piano any more so the emotion of this part is unstable. I imagine that the young girl is confusing about too many ideas that went through her mind.
The theme comes out again at the last third part, the feeling of music calm down after the second part. This time the theme needs to play even softer than the first time, the composer wrote “pp” on the score. This part just like something the young girl hoped comes true. The piece disappear gradually with violin play the overtone, audiences are entranced with such impressive music.
There is the link that Janine Jansen plays the Meditation. I really like the way she played
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MQROKUqMcE

Hilary Hahn

This is my favorite violinist Hilary Hahn! I hope you can like her too!!

Hilary Hahn was born in Lexington, Virginia. At the age of three she moved to Baltimore, where she began playing the violin one month before her fourth birthday in the Suzuki program of the Peabody Conservatory. For the next five years, Hahn studied in Baltimore with Klara Berkovich, a native of Odessa who taught for 25 years at the Leningrad School for the Musically Gifted. From age 10 to 17, she studied at The Curtis Institute of Music with the legendary Jascha Brodsky - the last surviving student of the great Belgian violinist Eugene Ysaÿe - working closely with him until his death at age 89. Having completed her university requirements at 16, Hahn deferred graduation and remained at the school for several more years, taking additional elective courses in languages, literature, writing and drama, coaching regularly with Jaime Laredo, and continuing to study chamber music with Felix Galimir and Gary Graffman.

A year and a half after entering the Curtis Institute of Music, Hahn made her major orchestral debut. In March 1995, at age 15, Hahn made her German debut playing the Beethoven concerto with Lorin Maazel and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in a concert broadcast on radio and television throughout Europe. Two months later she received the Avery Fisher Career Grant. She attended the Marlboro Music Festival for several summers, and in 1996 made her Carnegie Hall debut as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Introductions and Musical Influences

Hello my friends! I'm Duanjing from China, after one month I will be 19 years old.
My hometown is in HeNan Province. I started play the violin since I was four years old, the reason I chose to play the violin is there were many friends of me learnt instruments, like Guzheng, Erhu, piano and violin. My parents wanted me to learn music, too. They brought me to meet my first violin teacher, he can teach violin and piano. I pointed the violin and said "I want to learn that!"... my mother told me this thing many years later, it sounds really amazing! Afterwards, I was admitted to Wuhan Conservatory of Music attached to primary school, I studied in Wuhan for nine years until I came to Singapore. The life at Wuhan is very important for me, I'm so lucky that I can learn the violin with Dr Li, he is a very nice teacher. He likes all of his students and treat them as his own kids, especially to me...haha! And he taught me not only to be a good violinist, we need to be a good person before we can become a good musician. Furthermore, I made a lot of precious friends in Wuhan, we still keep in touch with each other even though I'm in Singapore now. Also, I get some achievements from my major during I was in Wuhan. I took part in different violin competitions and summer camps, learnt a lot from these activities.
All in all, music has already through my life, and influence me a lot. If I didn't play the violin, I cannot met the classmates whom I'm studying with now, and maybe I don't have the chance to come to Singapore for study... Everything around me is connected with music tightly, I feel grateful about these things just because I chose to learn music.