Good Opinion Essay Sample

When people attend a concert, they expect to hear music. There are common aspects that people look for when they envisage a musical piece, the basic one being that there must be sound for there to be music. Sound, however, must have certain attributes to it that differentiate it from unintended vibrations causing sound, from organized planned sounds intended to make music. Sounds are differentiated from music in that music has elements such as pitch, rhythm melody, timbre, texture, and dynamics. However, revolutionary ideas such as ones progressed by John Cage have portrayed the music in a different light, allowing for expression in this manner in uncommon forms. John Cage’s ‘silent piece’ is a journey from the ordinary.
The element that John Cage exploits is time. He figures that for any music to happen, it must occur within a given time frame. Thus, he composes his piece and binds it within a given time frame. Understanding of this piece has been a challenge to many people, but in light of the ideas that motivated John Cage to producing this piece, one can understand the motivation behind its creation. While listening to this piece one might see it as silence, John Cage reasons that there can never be a period of total silence. In writing this piece, John Cage tries to challenge his audience to seek silence, as a form of music. While the piece itself does not provide any sounds, the theatre where it was inaugurated had sounds from both the environment and the audience.
Appropriately, ‘The rite of spring’ also follows in the steps of the uncommon, similar to the silent piece. This piece, however, contains sounds; intended for the music, only that they do not follow expected standards of music. The dissonance, the irregularity of the sound, and the unnatural choreography that accompanied this piece at its premier performance led to the audience rioting in protest. A departure from the expected by such artists has led to the development of music to what we know it today.
Discussions abound on whether rap should be classified as music, but the boundaries have already expanded, and artistic creativity allowed to flow uninhibited by art conventions, rather allowed art to create its own conventions. The silent piece was appropriate and effective in its time, in that it passed the message Cage intended for the music community. Similarly, artists are free to create relevant pieces, unbound by conformity to aspects such as consonance or harmony.