As I was searching for a film score from a movie that depicted the crucifixion of Jesus, I stumbled about this video on YouTube. The video of the link I included with this post is derived from the movie, The Passion of the Christ, which was produced in 2004 with Mel Gibson in the cast. The reason this piece of music stuck out to me compared to the rest of the ones that I listened to is due to the range of beats it displayed. I was skeptical about the melody at first, however I became interested in how quick the music could change a mood. The first minute of the song is extremely slow paced and then at the 1:10 mark it begins to pick up. The reason for this more intense beat is from the drums that are being played and I could feel the intensity from the song. While I was listening, I caught myself forming images of what I believed was happening in the movie and that is why this piece of music was enjoyable for me.
The rhythm of the song begins to slowly change again around the 2:00 minute mark and I could see more emotions being displayed. I started to hear background voices that added to the music’s emotional feel. The 6th minute of the video was when my attention was at its peak and the music almost sounded like somebody whistling. The flow of the music began to develop further and at times it reminded me of some of the chants that we previously listened to. The last part of the song was more ancient-like in instruments and sounds that I heard. It had a Middle Eastern feel during this part of the soundtrack. Overall, I was impressed with the piece because of its diversity and how it could change the intensity in a snap of the finger.
Last week, I had to attend my grandfather’s funeral. While the event was sad, I was still able to recognize similarities from what we have learned in class to the Catholic service that followed the funeral. Growing up lacking a religious household, I had never attended a Catholic ceremony. We walked in, were seated in the pews, and waited for the priest to come up to the altar. I was expecting a speech about what happens to us in the afterlife, but what I heard instead shocked me. After the priest had situated himself at the altar, he opened his mouth and began to chant the scripture he was reading. I don’t fully understand why he did this but it made it interesting to hear. Even when they were singing hymns, it was interesting to see where they put the emphasis on the words. Although the event was melancholy, seeing what I have learned in class manifest itself in real life peeked my interest.
I’m starting this post with a quick summary. I missed Wednesday’s class because I was ill but I have seen bits and pieces of different Passion pieces because of my high school religion class. I watched the “Water Passion”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2356&v=jzR8mjxX7i8I thought it was very interesting how they used water as an instrument. It added to the experience in a way I have never seen before. They used the water at times like a percussion instrument. They had voices, instruments and water. All very different, but worked well together. I never thought to use water in a musical aspect before. I did not think you would be able to control it the way they did. I would imagine the water would be unpredictable, but they made it work. As for the the Passion soundtrack, the music I looked up on youtube and heard was very dramatic. There were many rises and falls. I thought it would be interesting to hear the music along with the clip to see how they compare and go together.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANXeE-H4Ak8
I thought the form of percussive forces on water as a medium of music was a unique and definitely grabbed my attention. I’ve personally never seen anything quite like it and this performance had my attention for the entire video, unlike most other video performances.
The passion of the Christ soundtrack was interesting because I found elements that reminded me of the music that we’ve heard in class but was also mixed with some newer sounds and instruments. I’ve never seen the movie but this soundtrack has pushed me more towards seeing it in the future, if I have the opportunity. I feel that watching at least some of this film would be a great class activity.
Pairing the songs with modern music was an interesting idea. The mislabeled prayer video was humorous to me even though I’m not religious. Things like the professor’s performance are, in my opinion, differentiate this class from so many other slow lecture based classes. I appreciate that he took the time to practice his performance and tie in an interesting activity to our learning materials.
Wednesday in class we spent a lot of time looking at and practicing modernized psalms. Our group chose Psalm 139 and set its text to Piano Man. It was a really interesting project as we looked at the rhythms of Piano Man and the words of Psalm 139 and had to find a way to make the two work together. What I found the most interesting was the creative freedom we were given to adapt the words and paraphrase them in order to make the words fit the song. After class I started thinking about how this would be a cool final project since Dr. McGrath had suggested it as well. I have started looking at some texts from the Bible and am thinking about either creating my own melody for the piece or setting the text to a well known modern-day song. We’ll see how it goes but I think that it’s going to be fun.
In class we set the words of a Psalm to the tune of a popular song. Even with my musical background I found it somewhat difficult to mash up the words from the bible with Nelly Furtado’s melody. We found ourselves messing around with where we could paraphrase and where we could alter the timing so that the message was still clear and the wording was comfortable. I think this could be done but in the long run using popular music in a church setting might distract from the true meaning of the biblical sayings as people might be distracted by the pop tune.
For the assignment about looking at modern day Passion songs, I looked at two different pieces. One piece was called the “Water Passion” by Tan Dun. This piece was very cool because I had never seen or heard anything like this before. I never would’ve thought to play water to create a new sound for music. The sounds of water added a very natural sound to the piece of music. I liked that they took something old and made it something new. The piece of Bach was transformed with the use of water.
I also looked at a piece from the TV show the Bible. While this piece, doesn’t relate specifically to the Passion, an episode on this show depicted the Passion. This show added a revived look at the story of the Bible. The piece I listened to was very simple because there was no words. It still was spiritual and added a sort of reverence for the story. It was interesting to listen to these very different pieces.
Monday’s class was an interesting one for me. Professor McGrath brought his guitar to class which immediately sparked my interest because I’ve always wanted to learn to play the guitar but never had the patience. I’ve had a guitar sitting in my closet for years, I’ll get to it one of these days. We also learned to adapt songs to verses in the Bible which I thought was extremely cool. It is amazing how you can take one melody or song and incorporate completely different lyrics. We also got in groups and picked songs to match to a Psalm. Unfortunately yesterday, I was entirely too sick to make it to to class but the song my group chose fit well with Psalm 23, I’m sure they put on a wonderful performance for the class.
Today in class, we did something very different than I would have expected. We chose a song that most people know and put it with the words from a Psalm. My group did Psalm 139 and the song Piano Man. Unfortunately, I do not know that song at all so I just kind of half sang because I didn’t know when I was supposed to sing what. It was a pretty cool experience overall though, because we got to cut some parts of the Psalm out in order to make it go with the rhythm of the song. We could also change or manipulate words to make it sound better to people listening. Our group was really quiet but I think it was mostly because we were all kind of confused by what we were supposed to say. Next time, better communication would make our group do/sound better. I really liked the Joy to the World one, it was a really smart idea to use a basic beat like that because I feel like you can easily manipulate the Psalm to fit the required rhythm, so props to that group! I enjoyed hearing everyone’s presentations and hopefully ours can be better next time!
