English For 3 Year Students: "Gh. Dima" Music Academy of Cluj-Napoca
English For 3 Year Students: "Gh. Dima" Music Academy of Cluj-Napoca
English For 3 Year Students: "Gh. Dima" Music Academy of Cluj-Napoca
Denisa-Alexandra Ionescu
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
IQ vs. EQ.........................................................................................................3
Sometimes, EQ is more important than IQ......................................................5
The 9 types of intelligence...............................................................................7
How composers from Mozart to Bach made their music up...........................9
Does listening to Mozart really boost your brainpower?................................12
The science of songs....................................................................................14
Music as a Marketing Tool ...........................................................................16
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UNIT 1
1. Different Types of Intelligence
*How do you “measure” intelligence? When you meet a person for the first
time how do you assess whether he/she is smart person or not? How important is this
aspect for you? Why? Please give reasons for your answer.
*What is IQ? Are you also familiar with the concept of EQ? What is the difference between
the two? Which of the two quotients do you think is higher in your case? What are you
looking for in a person: beauty, honesty, empathy, intelligence, etc.?
Read the chart and assess which quotient is higher in your case. Check with
your colleagues whether your assessment was accurate or not.
EQ vs. IQ
Emotional Intelligence, or emotional quotient (EQ), is defined as an individual's ability to identify,
evaluate, control, and express emotions. People with high EQ usually make great leaders and team players
because of their ability to understand, empathize, and connect with the people around them. IQ,
or intelligence quotient, is score derived from one of several standardized tests designed to assess an
individual's intelligence.
IQ is used to determine academic abilities and identify individuals with off-the-chart intelligence
or mental challenges. EQ is a better indicator of success in the workplace and is used to identify leaders,
good team players, and people who best work by themselves.
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EQ versus IQ comparison chart
EQ IQ
Abilities Identify, evaluate, control and Ability to learn, understand and apply
express emotions ones own information to skills, logical reasoning, word
emotions; perceive, and assess comprehension, math skills, abstract and
others' emotions; use emotions to spatial thinking, filter irrelevant information.
facilitate thinking, understand
emotional meanings.
In the workplace Teamwork, leadership, successful Success with challenging tasks, ability to
relations, service orientation, analyze and connect the dots, research and
initiative, collaboration. development.
Origin 1985, Wayne Payne's doctoral thesis 1883, English statistician Francis Galton's
"A Study of Emotion: Developing paper "Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its
Emotional Intelligence" Popular use Development" First application came in
came in Daniel Goleman's 1995 French psychologist Alfred Binet's 1905 test
book "Emotional Intelligence - Why to assess school children in France.
it can matter more than IQ"
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→Listen to the recording about IQ and EQ and answer the questions:
Fill in the gaps with the suitable word from the box:
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went on to get MBAs and postgraduate degrees," she says. "While in the past, this helped them advance
in their careers, today with so many people having the same high levels of knowledge and 8) _______
expertise, this route has reached maximum effectiveness. "What sets people 9) _______ now are their
abilities to manage themselves and develop productive relationships with others. It all boils 10) _______
to being emotionally intelligent."
At its simplest, emotional intelligence encompasses five competencies:
1. Self-awareness: Recognizing your emotions and their effects; knowing your strengths and limitations;
and having a strong sense of your capabilities and self- 11) _______.
2. Self-regulation: Managing your moods by keeping disruptive emotions and impulses in check; and
channeling your feelings and resources to 12) _______ your performance and productivity.
3. Self-motivation: Knowing how to use your emotions to propel yourself into action 13) _______ a
desired goal and to persevere despite obstacles and setbacks.
4. Empathy: Your ability to sense others' feelings and perspectives; read and understand the dynamics of
relationships; and anticipate, recognize and 14)_______ key constituents' needs.
5. Social skills: Your adeptness at inducing desirable responses in others 15)_______ communication,
collaboration, influence and relationship-building.
"In the new workplace, with its emphasis on flexibility, teams and a strong customer orientation,
this crucial set of emotional competencies is becoming 16) _______ essential for excellence in every job
in every part of the world," Goleman says.
Unlike IQ, which is pretty much established at birth, EQ can be learned, implemented and
improved 17) _______ at any age. In fact, studies show our emotional intelligence increases as we get
older -- peaking between 50 and 59.
What's the best way to raise your EQ on your own?
Psychologist Hendrie Weisinger advocates increasing your self-awareness. He advises taking a
reading of your emotions several times 18) _______ the day and keeping a journal. After a week, access
what you're feeling, how you're channeling your feelings and how it affects your workday. If you're
sending yourself negative messages, plant positive ones in their place. For example, if you find you're
telling yourself "I'm stupid" after making a mistake, replace that message with "What can I do differently
next time?"
It also helps to have an EQ role model. Identify people you know who excel as individuals and
also maximize a team's potential through building bonds, collaboration and creating group synergy in 19)
_______ of collective goals. Watch how they sell their ideas, handle criticism from others, and 20)
_______ with setbacks. Then apply those skills in your own life and see what a difference it makes!
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(adapted from http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/Careers/01/13/emotions/index.html)
demanding, pursuit, worth, deal, technical, looks, far, apart, down, enhance, meet, through, over,
increasingly, upon, entry, toward, throughout, to, threshold
Read the following text and try to assess your personal skills. Which of the 9
types of intelligence listed below characterizes you the most? Do your friends and
colleagues agree with your self-assessment?
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Logical-mathematical intelligence is the ability to calculate, quantify, consider propositions and
hypotheses, and carry out complete mathematical operations. It enables us to perceive relationships and
connections and to use abstract, symbolic thought; sequential reasoning skills; and inductive and
deductive thinking patterns. Logical intelligence is usually well developed in mathematicians, scientists,
and detectives. Young adults with lots of logical intelligence are interested in patterns, categories, and
relationships. They are drawn to arithmetic problems, strategy games and experiments.
4. Existential Intelligence
Sensitivity and capacity to tackle deep questions about human existence, such as the meaning of
life, why do we die, and how did we get here.
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Intra-personal intelligence is the capacity to understand oneself and one’s thoughts and feelings,
and to use such knowledge in planning and directioning one’s life. Intra-personal intelligence involves
not only an appreciation of the self, but also of the human condition. It is evident in psychologists,
spiritual leaders, and philosophers. These young adults may be shy. They are very aware of their own
feelings and are self-motivated.
(adapted from
http://skyview.vansd.org/lschmidt/Projects/The%20Nine%20Types%20of%20Intelligence.htm)
*The text contends that “mathematical and musical intelligences may share common
thinking processes”. Do you agree? If so, can you give some examples?
*Please give synonyms to the following words: designate, note, motive, capacity, core.
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Fill in the gaps with the suitable word:
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life. Apparently when he was asked to join Mizler’s society of Musical Sciences he delayed until 1747
just to ensure that he could be the 14th member to join.
Schumann 13) _______ was an inveterate user of musical cryptograms. More recently, Alban
Berg regarded 23 as his signature number, rather like a footballer being identified by his shirt number. For
example, the Lyric Suite is made up of a sequence of 23-bar phrases. Embedded in the piece is a musical
representation of a love affair that Berg was having at the time. His lover was denoted by a 10-bar
sequence which he entwined with his own signature, 23, using the combination of mathematics and music
to serenade his affair.
But it's probably Mozart's final opera, The Magic Flute, that is the work most laden 14) _______
symbolism and numerical imagery. The opera is full of Masonic symbols, which in turn are underpinned
by mathematics – Mozart had been admitted to Beneficence lodge in Vienna seven years earlier. The
number three, for example, is very significant in Masonic practice. The three knocks at the lodge door that
are part of the initiation ceremony for a new mason are heard again and again throughout the opera. As
Goethe, a fellow mason, declared: "The crowd should find pleasure in seeing the spectacle: at the same
time, its high significance will not escape the initiates."
Beyond the three-note rhythm sequence the number three is threaded through the opera in
numerous ways. Much of Mozart’s Masonic music is written in E flat major, a key with three flats,
although this may have more to do with the key being best suited for the wind instruments that Mozart
employed. Many of the characters come 15) _______ threes: the three ladies who serve the Queen of the
Night, the three boys. Three-part harmony abounds.
The opera is also full of pairs. Day and night, fire and water, Osiris and Isis, gold and silver, sun
and moon. The number five plays a part, another important number for the masons given their choice of
the symbol of the pentagram or five-pointed star. Trios give way to quintets, not quartets. And ultimately
Sarastro’s power is bound 16) _______ in the mystical seal of the seven circles of the sun.
For Mozart The Magic Flute is also a statement of his belief in a changing order, not just politically but
also musically. The work premiered in Vienna in 1791, two years after the revolution that swept the
streets of Paris. The Masonic order had suffered repression because the authorities feared the enlightened
ideas this secret society was promoting. This transition from ancient regime to enlightenment is captured
in the music. The ornate music of the Queen of the Night gives 17) _______ to a new sound that Mozart
hoped would be his legacy.
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Are you familiar with the “Mozart Effect”? Do you think it is real? Read the
following text and comment upon it.
→Listen to the recording about the “Mozart effect” and answer the questions:
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The phrase “the Mozart effect” was coined in 1991, but it is a study described two years later in
the journal Nature that sparked real media and public interest about the idea that listening to classical
music somehow improves the brain. It is one of those ideas that feels plausible. Mozart was 2)
(DOUBT) a genius himself, his music is complex and there is a hope that if we listen to enough of it, a
little of that intelligence might rub off on us.
The idea took off, with thousands of parents playing Mozart to their children, and in 1998 Zell
Miller, the Governor of the state of Georgia in the US, even asked for money to be set aside in the state
budget so that every newborn baby could be sent a CD of classical music. It’s not just babies and
children who were 3) (DELIBERATE) exposed to Mozart’s melodies. When Sergio Della Sala, the
psychologist and author of the book Mind Myths, visited a mozzarella farm in Italy, the farmer proudly
explained that the buffalos were played Mozart three times a day to help them to produce better milk.
I’ll leave the debate on the impact on milk yield to farmers, but what about the evidence that
listening to Mozart makes people more intelligent?
When you look back at the original paper, the first surprise is that the authors from the
University of California, are modest in their 4) (CLAIM) and don’t even use the “Mozart effect” phrase
in the paper. The second surprise is that it wasn’t conducted on children at all: it was in fact conducted
with those stalwarts of psychological studies – young adult students. Only 36 students took part. On
three occasions they were given a series of mental tasks to complete, and before each task, they listened
either to ten minutes of silence, ten minutes of a tape of 5) (RELAX) instructions, or ten minutes of
Mozart’s sonata for two pianos in D major (K448).
The students who listened to Mozart did better at tasks where they had to create shapes in their
minds. For a short time the students were better at 6) (SPACE) tasks where they had to look at folded up
pieces of paper with cuts in them and to predict how they would appear when unfolded. But 7)
(FORTUNE), as the authors make clear at the time, this effect lasts for about fifteen minutes. So it’s
hardly going to bring you a lifetime of enhanced intelligence.
Nevertheless, people began to theorise about why it was that Mozart’s music in particular could
have this effect. Did the complexity of music cause patterns of cortical firing in the brain similar to those
associated with solving spatial puzzles?
More 5) (RESEARCH) followed, and an 8) (ANALYSE) of sixteen different studies confirmed
that listening to music does lead to a temporary 9) (IMPROVE) in the ability to manipulate shapes
mentally, but the benefits are short-lived and they don’t make us more intelligent.
Then it began to emerge that perhaps Mozart wasn’t so special after all. In 2010 a larger meta-
analysis of a greater number of studies again found a positive effect, but that other kinds of
music worked just as well. One study found that listening to Schubert was just as good, and so was
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hearing a passage read out aloud from a Stephen King novel. But only if you enjoyed it. So, perhaps 10)
(ENJOY) and 11) (ENGAGE) are key, rather than the exact notes you hear.
Although we tend to associate the Mozart effect with babies and small children, most of these
studies were conducted on adults, whose brains are of course at a very different stage of 12)
(DEVELOP). But in 2006 a large study was conducted in Britain involving eight thousand children.
They listened either to ten minutes of Mozart’s String Quintet in D Major, a discussion about the
experiment or to a sequence of three pop songs: Blur’s “Country House,” “Return of the Mack,” by
Mark Morrison and PJ and Duncan’s “Stepping Stone”. Once again music improved the ability to
predict paper shapes, but this time it wasn’t a Mozart effect, but a Blur effect. The children who listened
to Mozart did well, but with pop music they did even better, so prior 13) (PREFER) could come into it.
Whatever your musical 14) (CHOOSE), it seems that all you need to do a bit better at predictive
origami is some cognitive 15) (AROUSE). Your mind needs to get a little more active, it needs
something to get it going and that’s going to be whichever kind of music appeals to you. In fact, it
doesn’t have to be music. Anything that makes you more alert should work just as well – doing a few
star jumps or drinking some coffee, for instance.
There is a way in which music can make a difference to your IQ, though. Unfortunately it
requires a bit more effort than putting on a CD. Learning to play a musical instrument can have a
beneficial effect on your brain. Jessica Grahn, a cognitive 16) (SCIENCE) at Western University in
London says that a year of piano lessons, combined with regular practice can increase IQ by as much as
three points.
So listening to Mozart won’t do you or your children any harm and could be the start of a life-
long love of classical music. But unless you and your family have some urgent imaginary origami to do,
the chances are that sticking on a sonata is not going to make you better at anything.
Assess whether the statements are true or false according to the text below:
The science of songs: how does music affect your body chemistry?
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Like many music lovers I’ve always had a fascination with the emotional power. How can a
combination of sounds make all the hairs on your arms stand on end, or make you cry? I’ve always
enjoyed reading newspaper and magazine articles about the psychological effects of music, but apart from
the general conclusion that “music is magical”, they rarely provide any scientific answers.
But there are answers as to why music has such power over us. Since the middle of the 20th
century, music psychologists have been carrying out a wide range of fascinating research into how our
brains and bodies respond to music – but most of this has been relayed to us in formal scientific language,
so I thought it would be a good idea to gather together the most interesting facts and theories from this
large body of work and present them in plain language for the general reader.
I spent four years gathering information for my book, Why We Love Music, reading textbooks and
papers packed full with phrases like “spectral structure and harmonic syntax” and “amplitudes of
transglottal airflow”. Translated into conversational English, the science – I think – is of interest to
everyone who loves music (and even those few of us who don’t). For example, experiments have
demonstrated that music is extremely effective at curing insomnia; that shoppers spend more money in
stores playing classical music; and that communal singing helps humans to bond with each other by
releasing oxytocin into our system - the same chemical we experience during sex or breast-feeding.
The effect of music on our body chemistry is particularly fascinating to me. Our bodies
effectively contain an internal pharmacy that dispenses various chemicals to help us deal with life’s
challenges. For example, if you’re in a dangerous situation, you’ll receive a shot of adrenaline to give you
energy, and if you do something which is good for you, you get a dose of serotonin (which encourages
you to do the same thing again). Research has revealed that music holds the keys to your body’s
pharmacy, and can promote or suppress the release of these chemicals. For example, loud and rhythmic
music can increase your adrenaline levels, which will help to keep you awake during a long, boring drive.
But in the case of insomnia, relaxing music can help you drop off to sleep by reducing the amount of the
‘vigilance chemical’ Noradrenaline in your system. Just half an hour of calming classical music at
bedtime can help you to re-establish a healthy sleep pattern – I’d suggest lute music, like Nigel North’s
Cantabile.
Professors North and Hargreaves put music speakers on the top shelf of an end-of-aisle wine
display in a supermarket to see if different sorts of music could influence the choices we make. The
display consisted of four shelves, each of which had a French wine on one side and a German wine on the
other. The wines on each shelf were matched for price and sweetness/dryness so there was a fair
competition between the two countries.
Then all they had to do was change the music occasionally and monitor which wines were bought
when each type of music was playing. The results were astonishing: With no music playing the French
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wine was slightly more popular than the German. However, when they played German music through the
speakers the German wine sold twice as fast as the French stuff. When they played French music the
French bottles sold five times as fast as the German ones.
This implies that we are as helpless as krill in the path of a blue whale as far as marketing music
is concerned. And the effect is subconscious – only one in eight of the wine buyers realised that the music
had influenced their choice.
1) Scholars have been studying for many centuries the effects of music on our brains
and bodies, but only recently the results have been made public using plain
language so that everybody can grasp the theoretical concepts.
Are you familiar with the terms “marketing” and “brand”? Can you explain
them? Have you ever considered there might be a connection between music and
marketing? If so, can you give examples of situations illustrating this relation?
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Part of the reason these studies showed the link between the music and marketing is because the
former activates many centers across the brain, including the emotional ones. These areas are active and
processing the data. When this occurs, memory is triggered and a perception is formed. In addition, music
has the ability to take us back in time to emotions we felt, even to the music of our parents or
grandparents as is depicted in the Apple Christmas commercial.
So why is music so emotionally charged for us? I once read “Music comes the closest to
expressing the inexpressible.” I couldn’t agree more. This is because music has a language of its own.
Malini Mohana, Neuropsychology researcher from the University of Cape Town, South Africa defined it
like this: “Music can be thought of as a type of perceptual illusion, much the same way in which a collage
is perceived. The brain imposes structure and order on a sequence of sounds that, in effect, creates an
entirely new system of meaning.”
The language your brain associates with music creates emotions. This language is why you turn
up the volume when you hear a song from your youth and sing along joyfully, particularly when you
haven’t heard it in a long time. Your brain is producing happy memories that evoke strong emotions. The
brain’s emotional language and memory are all active when listening to music, making it synthesize a
memory of your feelings associated with the sounds and rhythm of it.
Several studies have revealed music has a link with our memory. In one study, researchers
discovered singing aids in learning a foreign language. Perhaps it is also why those of us around in 1971
know that Coke would “Like to Teach the World to Sing” is a classic and made everyone sing this song.
Branding with music creates a memory. Just Hope it’s a Good one… Apple and Coke have chosen good
songs to create the memory with their Customers. In both cases, the song and the resulting connection is
likely to keep positive emotions associated with the brand name. They did a great job.
Using music is not a guarantee of good feelings however. Consider the David’s Pizza
commercial. Why is the Gershwin song great and the David’s pizza song well, … not great? According to
Mohana, it’s because the brain structures are wired to anticipate rhythm and melody. Your brain
automatically starts to synchronize with the beat and predicts the next one. This happens in the
subconscious. Skilled composers are masters at balancing when these expectations are met and when they
are not.
Music and branding are a great combination for any organization. Having a great song, jingle, or
score makes the ad create positive emotions in the minds of your Customers. It gives your brand promise
a foundation built on good memories. From there, you can build the brand to attract them to your
business.
Of course, you’d better make sure that the Customer Experience they have when they get there is
as advertised. Disappointment is never an emotion that leads to a good Customer Experience. Apple’s
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new Holiday ad is heartwarming; it’s also genius. By reaching in and plucking your heartstrings, it
embeds its brand right into your subconscious mind.
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recent article in the “New York Times” he is committed to tonality as a composer, but that does not
prevent him from complimenting the work of Boulez and Lukas Foss.
The ability to see both sides of the issue continually illuminates his conversation. Here is a man,
apparently an extreme extrovert, who delights in the glamour of conducting a full symphony orchestra, of
directing large-scale works, the bigger the better, yet who still has extreme curiosity about the 12) (FEEL)
and 13) (REACT) of those around him.
I tackled him on one of his less successful records, in which he performs this double function of
pianist and conductor, Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto. Why, I asked, did he play his solos in the slow
14) (MOVE) at quite a different speed from the tempo he had set for the concerted passages? He did his
best to justify it. The piano, he contended, “takes more time to sing out” than the orchestra. He noted the
same discrepancy in a recording he made only a week or so back in Vienna – Mozart’s B flat Piano
Concerto, K450. He was worried at first by the 15) (CHANGE) of tempo as they grew more extreme;
then realised that that was indeed what he intended.
That particular performance was conceived in that way, but he emphasised that no two
performances should ever be identical. In that very concerto his recorded performance was overtly
romantic with plenty of pedal, but when he went to Monte Carlo to play in a comparatively intimate hall
he found himself using next to no pedal, none at all in one movement, and the result was more classical.
Sometimes, he admitted, a recording session doesn’t go [well], “and then you have to piece many
bits together.” He conceded that maybe the Beethoven First record I disliked had been made up from too
many tapes. It wasn’t a real performance. On the other hand, the disjointed technique inevitable in
recording complete operas did not prevent a “real performance” in the end. He has just finished recording
Verdi’s Falstaff in Vienna with Fischer-Dieskau for CBS and that, he had instinctively felt throughout
the sessions, would be a real, coordinated performance.
Now in London he is going to record Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand. It is partly a
compliment to the LSO (also partly economic necessity) that he is doing it on this side of the Atlantic. He
is looking forward with relief to conducting in English again after his six weeks in Vienna. The names of
notes are so difficult in German, he complained, but it is hard to believe that anything is difficult for
Leonard Bernstein.
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Listen to the recording about musical semantics and assess whether
the following statements are true or false:
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That reaction was mild compared with the way the conductor Hans von Bulow judged a
composition that Nietzsche sent him the following year. Bulow told Nietzsche the work was a joke, even
a crime: "It is more terrible than you think."
Now listeners can judge Nietzsche's music for themselves. His piano compositions, mostly
written in 1862 when he was 17, have just been released on a Newport Classic CD. The performers do not
have the status of Cosima and Richter, but they serve this music with enough taste to prevent anybody
from doubling up with laughter. Removed from the hothouse atmosphere of the Wagner circle, the music
hardly seems criminal at all. It is not what one would expect from Nietzsche the philosopher. It is not, like
his writings, full of extravagant expression or apocalyptic proclamation. It is neither Apollonian nor
Dionysian (to use the distinction between reasoned detachment and passionate abandon that Nietzsche
made famous in The Birth of Tragedy). The first works, in fact, resemble early Romantic miniatures,
lasting under two minutes. They are lucid, occasionally awkward, pictorial, even pretty. Along with a
mazurka in the style of Chopin, they include a piece called From Childhood that recalls Schumann, and
even a work with the lilting innocence of Mendelssohn, In the Moonlight on the Plains. Ermanarich, a
tone poem, falters, but its tantrums anticipate the philosopher yet to come. It is easy to see why Wagner's
music overwhelmed and intoxicated the composer of these often melancholic works.
It is also possible to imagine how, in the face of Wagner's operas (which Nietzsche asserted were
comparable to Greek tragedy), he might have felt himself at risk. He was swept away by their power. His
own compositions from the 1870's are haunted by Wagner. Wagnerism may have been a burden.
Nietzsche's book on tragedy, which ended with a defense of Wagner, even jeopardized his academic
career as a classicist and philologist.
The acolyte converted to opponent. "I feel the urge to open the windows a little," Nietzsche later
proclaimed in an attack on the world of his former idol. "Air! More air!" He argued that Wagner, so
acclaimed for his epic dramas and infinite melodies, was actually "admirable and gracious only in the
invention of what is smallest." Wagner, Nietzsche said, was "our greatest miniaturist in music who
crowds into the smallest space an infinity of sense and sweetness." Everything else was decadence and
distortion.
Nietzsche's attack on Wagner was an attack on the entire culture of late Romanticism: on the
virtuoso, on the actor-performer (Liszt as well as Wagner), on mass audiences, on the "educated rabble"
hypnotized by pretense. Treading rather heavily himself, Nietzsche insisted on precisely what he found
missing in Wagner: "light feet, wit, fire, grace; the great logic; the dance of the stars; the exuberant
spirituality; the southern shivers of light; the smooth sea."
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Nietzsche wanted music to serve a function. He rejected the notion that art served only itself; he
rejected the "sick" ends to which, in his view, late Romanticism was directed. Debussy (himself once a
Wagnerite) may have had Nietzsche's call to arms in mind when he ribbed Tristan in his exuberant
Golliwog's Cakewalk. One can even imagine a Nietzschean approach in the crisp irony and unsentimental
dance of Stravinsky. Nietzsche called for an art not for audiences - which he scorned - but for a new kind
of artist. He did not live to see the result: modernism. In his philosophy, Nietzsche argued that society
should be free from the shadow of God and the rule of Reason. In music he was less radical, but his attack
on Wagner accompanied the loosening of music's moorings in myth and public drama; music was finally
set free in a world of personal taste and individual will.
Music, Nietzsche wrote, represents the last breath of a culture: only in Handel were Lutheranism
and the Reformation finally captured; only in Mozart was the age of Racine and Louis XIV turned to
gold; only in Beethoven and Rossini did the 18th century sing out. "All true, all original music is a swan
song," he wrote. He saw Wagner's music as the final gasp of dying German culture.
*Which was Nietzsche’s opinion in regard to figure of the “virtuoso”? What about mass
audiences? Does it resemble the stand taken by other men of culture?
*Which was the function that music had to serve according to Nietzsche? Do you agree?
Are you familiar with any Irish contemporary classical music composers?
What about Irish composers of all times? If so, is there anything specific to the music they
compose? Are there any particular traits of Romanian classical music that distinguish it from
the music composed in other countries?
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SHAUN DAVEY
Shaun Davey was born in Belfast in 1948. Originally trained at Trinity College, Dublin and The
Courtauld Institute as an art historian, he has worked as a full-time professional composer since 1977. In
Ireland his often large-scale, melodic, narrative compositions have been recognised as a bridge between
Irish traditional music and orchestral traditions, eg. The Brendan Voyage. His suite for the Dublin Special
Olympics was performed before an audience of 80,000 and his setting of St Patricks’ prayer The Deers
Cry was performed at the recent inauguration of the Irish President. His work features on the Irish school
syllabus.
THEATRE
In theatre he has composed many scores for the Royal Shakespeare Company. In the USA he has
worked both on and off Broadway, with a New York Critics Award and a Tony nomination for best
musical score for James Joyce’s The Dead, a San Diego Critics Award for The Tempest and a Drama
Desk nomination for Pericles. Work in Ireland at The Abbey includes The Silver Tassie, Well of the
Saints and Observe the Sons of Ulster marching towards the Somme.
FILM and TV
His work in TV and film includes the scores for The Spike, The Burke Enigma, Still
Love, Catchpenny Twist, Pentecost, The Hanging Gale, Loving, Ballykissangel series 1-3(BBC), David
Copperfield (Hallmark), and scores for feature films Twelfth Night, Waking Ned Devine, The Tailor of
Panama, The Abduction Club. His work in TV and Film is recognized with two BAFTA Nominations, an
Ivor Novello Award, an Ivor nomination, a Golden Reel Award (Waking Ned Devine), and a TRIC
Award for best UK TV signature theme.
CONCERTS
Shaun Davey's concert work began with an ambitious pairing of the Irish uilleann pipes and a
symphony orchestra to tell the story of a medieval leather boat crossing the Atlantic (The Brendan
Voyage); followed by a suite for Celtic Instruments, choir and orchestra (The Pilgrim), narrative songs
about the woman clan chieftain Grace O'Malley (Granuaile), a symphony for peace (The Relief of Derry
Symphony), a choral/orchestral meditation on Jonathan Swift's later years (Gulliver), an anthem and songs
of welcome (Suite for the Dublin Special Olympics), suites of his music from theatre and film, songs for a
traditional band (BéalTuinne), music for the Irish National Youth Orchestra, music for a series of Irish-
Romanian collaboration concerts (Voices from the Merry Cemetery), settings of poems by Romanian poet
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Mihai Eminescu (Dintre sute de catarge and Stelele-n-cer), four Christmas Carols, a suite of sea shanties,
settings of Latin psalms, a song suite about the wife of James Joyce (Nora Barnacle), etc.
Fill in the gaps with the suitable word from the box:
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The route he traveled towards this goal of becoming a composer of a unique form of Irish concert
works was as unorthodox as that of his early years. "The reason I was able to leave teaching and work in
music was simply because I was able to work at providing music for 9) _______. So I spent years doing
that. And during the course of that, the goals I 10) _______ myself were to develop as much musically as
I could 11) _______ that framework, and to learn as much as I could and part of that was to learn
notation. And one other thing there was a great need to be tuneful; and even within thirty seconds, a tune
can have a beginning, middle, and an end. And if ever the history of jingles comes to be written, the best
jingles will be found to have exactly that, a beginning, middle, and an end. Just like any piece of music."
The Brendan Voyage, his first concert work, came about, he said, because he wanted to write a
piece of music based on real experience, specifically Tim Severin's crossing the Atlantic in a leather-12)
_______ boat. “I wanted in that piece to explore my understanding of the uilleann pipes, and my
understanding of the orchestra, and put the two together in a way that had not been done before. And I
also wanted to write a piece of music that was 13) _______… I was trying to make it up as I went 14)
_______, and the fundamental difficulty was how to carry a whole tract of music in my head and write it
all down before I either became totally exhausted or forgot it. That was the discipline”.
acclaimed, ear, within, hard, drive, advertisements, warning, set, skin, performable, living, along,
genuine, sight
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IRISH SHAUN DAVEY BRINGS “VOICES
FROM THE MERRY CEMETERY” ON
BUCHAREST STAGE