Orff's Carmina Barana and a very long, unrelated saga on religion (namely Catholicism) and accepting Christ

Well, I haven’t started my listening journal because I’ve been talking to someone about his Catholic Faith and Jesus for the last 3hrs. Now, no offense to this class, because I do love listening to music, but I stand by my decision that it was more important to talk to my friend about his religion instead of writing about a piece of music. Well now that I’ve told you just a tad, I’m a bit trapped and will have to tell you all that’s really gone on, even if you don’t really care, because I’m very excited about it. I’m not sure what sparked the conversation, but I believe that it was God answering mine and others prayers for doors to be opened to talk to my fraternity brothers about my faith, and shazam! Here the doors opened in a very big way just one night after the prayers with very little work from me alone. I was fascinated to hear about all the traditions of Catholicism and wanted to figure out why it was so important and what they truly meant to him in particular. In our discussions, my concern quickly became that with all this focus on so many traditions (great as they seem), the focus was taken off what really mattered (Man’s fall, separation from God and the judgment of death, God’s love and compassion, Jesus’ death and resurrection, victory over Satan and the death of sin, accepting Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior and admitting your great need in him and his blood, so as to receive the free gift of eternal life and salvation with the Lord, striving to glorify God in all that you do out of gratitude for his magnificent blessing and unconditional love). What I kept continually stressing and asking him was “I know you went through confirmation in front of all these people, and don’t get me wrong, it’s a great tradition and all, but do you really know Jesus and profess him as your savior with not only your mouth, but inside your heart? Because that’s how the spirit comes into the heart, and if there is no spirit within you, then your words will not save you when you come face to face with the God of the Universe.” I never really got a straight answer. And I was denied when I asked if I can pray that prayer by his side tonight. So I don’t really know what’s going on inside of him, but I’ll continue to hope and pray that if he indeed doesn’t know Jesus, that he will come to him by the end of the week, because we never know what tomorrow will bring. I don’t know if anyone will read this, but I apologize if I’ve offended anyone and hope that you can understand that as a Christian, I would feel that I’ve done an injustice to God, myself, and everyone of you if I kept silent the call that came as I entered this Blogg. When you stand before the throne of God on the Day of Judgment, I don’t want anyone to be able to say that you never heard about Jesus because Edward Geyer always sat quietly in the back of class and never spoke a word. If this has affected one person for the better, it was worth the time it took to write this a 100-fold. And it doesn’t matter to me if you’re Catholic, Jew, Atheist, Mormon, Baptist, or Presbyterian, I would love to hear about your faith and to tell you about mine. Because I’m in the business of saving souls and changing hearts for the better, and things are just starting to heat up. You see, I’m probably the shyest person in the entire class, but when I come boldly to the grace of the throne and answer the call from God above, I can give all my fears and restrictions to Him, and in His mighty wisdom and all-consuming love, He will take control and say things in this journal for which I myself have no words in me to say.

And now, on a fantastically lighter note, here is the form of my piece. To me, the form and division of this piece consists of 3 sections whose separation dictated almost completely by the large, sudden change in volume, register, and density. For example, nearly the exact same motive is repeated over and over in both the middle and final section, but boy do we hear a powerful difference. The middle gives a sense of preparation for going to war (sorry Dr. Spiegelberg, I know you don’t like us equating music to war, but that’s what I hear) or something and waiting for it to happen. And though we expect that to come, we start to doubt for a little as it plays that same motive over and over, softly but with some energy, it never really goes anywhere. But then when it comes we nearly fall out of our seats, even if we’ve heard the final part a zillion times in movies and commercials. And all that has really changed is a higher register, greater volume, and fuller density. The power in the sound at the beginning also enhances the distinction of the middle section. Aside from this, there is not really any cadential motion, transitions, important modulations or any other important phenomena to the structure. It moves to sections differently than the typical classical form, as 1 (A) was unrelated to 2 and 2 was more expository, and 3 (C) was a development of 2 (B). So I can’t really define the form because in all the stuff that we’ve done has some sort of a return of the A section at the end.

See everyone in a few hours, and best of luck on that test.