The Bible and Music

In speaking about the Magnificat or The Song of Mary, the main theme we focused on was creating your own work in writing essays and more importantly writing songs. Some of the pieces we discussed for writing essays and songs is where to start, to whom our audience is, the simplicity of the work, how to revise or edit the work, and bringing in other sources. These tasks may seem simple at times, however it is a complex action to bring in another source and still personalize your own work with creativity. In terms of differences for writing standard essays and song writing, the points we brought out included how song writing encourages repetition more than essay writing. Another difference mentioned was how we can stretch out words in song writing and create longer notes that fits the voice or instruments utilized. In essay writing, creating bigger font is not necessarily wanted. In song writing, you have to find where the music has to go up and down or where the focus is. Essay writing may have revision that requires the author to consider certain fragments of their writing, but not similar to song creating.

The class activity of deciding where we should be emphasis on words and form a rhythm was difficult at first, yet I learned that there was not a wrong way to do it. The first trial was easier to create because I looked at the syllables and basically followed that format. However after I did my second attempt, I decided to put the emphasis on the small words before introducing the words with longer syllables. This is not a common practice, but it brought out a different perspective that audiences are not typically familiar with. This activity taught me how many aspects go into song writing and how you can easily create a different work of music with even a small variation in melody or changing how long you sing a word.