The Age of Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment

As we started the unit, the Age of Enlightenment or The Age of Reason, I honestly wasn't sure what we were going to learn about. I didn't learn much about this era in high school so I was excited to learn about it's history. In our recent class our professor put up some pictures on the projector and asked us how they related to the Age of Enlightenment. At first when I was looking at the pictures I had no idea how they related to the Age of Enlightenment and I wasn't sure why we were being asked to do this, then I realized that these extremely detailed paintings and landscapes have so much to do with this era.

The picture below looks like one of the pictures showed in class:

In class we were asked to describe how this picture represents the Enlightenment era. After we started listing off commonalities, this is what we came up with:

• symmetry: music of this era was known to have balanced symmetry in its melodic phrases
• simple: music of this era is classified as simple classic music because of the harmonies
• overhead view
• swirls: spiraling of education, technology, music and science

We were going through pictures and paintings like these and it really made me think about this era and how art from this age represented the time beautifully and clearly. I believe that this age is so important because it was a time of change and a time of education. There were so many changes that had shaped life after this time and changed lifestyles afterwards. My favorite part of this era is the beautiful and simple music that came out of it. The Age of Enlightenment was the beginning of classical music. This time produced so many performers, writers, and composers who were among the greatest artists of all time. (I think that is so cool!!)

Some of us might hate classical music but I have a lot of respect for it. There is a lot of time and work that is put into composing and playing it. When I first applied to Ithaca, I applied to the music school. I had to do pre-screening auditions and I realized after those auditions I was supposed to have pieces ready in classical style. Let's just say I'm not classically trained on the guitar. I thought that maybe if I had learned the style for about a year I could re-audition to try and get in but once I started learning it, it was probably the hardest style I've ever had to play. So, for that reason I have a lot of respect of the genre. 

Can't wait to learn more about this topic!