Understanding Media Studies: A Blog

1. I’d like to visit this collection if I’m ever up in Massachusetts
2. I’m amazed at the differences you can hear in the same piece on what are, by definition, the same instruments but with different histories and idiosyncracies inherent to their manufacture.

“When composers wrote for these instruments they sometimes loved them and sometimes chafed at their limitations, but in any case they wrote for those sounds, that touch, those bells and whistles. From old instruments, performers on modern pianos can get important insights into the sound image that Mozart, Schubert, et al., were aiming for. But music from the 18^th and 19^th centuries doesn’t just sound different now than on the original instruments; some of it can’t even be played as written on modern pianos.”

Consider “the Medium is the Message.” These instruments inform their expression as the composer intended them, and ultimately how they’re expressed as we hear them performed. Imagine how the message changes through time to become something not necessarily bad, but new. I’m curious as to how time plays a factor in any one medium and how a message changes from one time period to the next. Especially with the internet, that process seems to be speeding up.