AMD1, Bryce Schmidt

I am a music performance major here at the University of Michigan and to be more accurate I am a trumpet performance major. That means my life revolves around music. I am strictly studying classical music at this point and have the unique opportunity to play great classical German works on a regular basis. This week in my Orchestral rep. class (Our class reads down some of the most well known orchestral pieces written) we played Also Sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30 by one of Germany's most famous composers, Richard Strauss.

Strauss was well known for his compositions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Composers when writing music use musical terms to help musicians like myself to help us convey the story, picture, feeling, emotion that they desire to the audience. These words can refer to changing of tempo's, articulations, etc. For example some of the common German words used include schnell (quickly), immer ruhiger (always quiet), sehr lebhafter (very lively) and feierlich (solemnly). These are only a handful of words used and I only got these from the first page of three. It was very interesting to go through and try to figure out the meanings of the words by listening to the music being played.