How A Composer Connects With An Audience

People often ask me how did I develop my style of playing the piano? This article will introduce you to the basic premise of my musical foundation.

Music is a universal language which cuts across all borders of nationality, culture, and race. It has proven with time to be a tool that arouses emotion and feelings in people. Music is readily appreciated when the listeners can process all of its underlying structures alongside some level of suspense. Musical composers are aware of these and therefore try as much as possible to manipulate the emotions contained within the song when they know what the audience craves, and controls when and how to deliver these to them via masterpieces of music. Music can have different emotional impacts on people; it can also alter the state of the human mind, behavior, psychology, and brain. Music has played a significant role all through history with several research and experimentations conducted in the 19th and 20th centuries, which shows that music in general, can have a physical and unplanned effect on human actions and intelligence.

Musical expression and emotions are fundamental to musical composition, and this affects how listeners perceive such music. Composers make use of musical elements such as pitch register, rhythm, tempo, dynamics, melody, rhythmic variation to directly relate with listeners. Sometimes composers use keys to express their mood; therefore, many people readily associate with the use of minor scales to depict something sad and significant keys to depict happiness. Another way composers connect with the audience is through the use of musical dynamics that match with the text or lyrics found in the music.

When a composer expresses emotion perfectly, the listeners get an accurate picture of what the music represents. Composers understand that they need an intermediary between them and the listeners and that is the performer, who will creatively interpret the composition. This performer acts as both a music interpreter and at the same time connects both listeners and composers using his/her artistic personality.

Music never dies because, with each listener, beautiful connections are created which are in most cases oblivious to the composer and the performer. These beautiful connections are the particular factors that keep the music fresh through time. The composers’ emotion at the point of writing the music is shared with the listeners through their music but much more than that, listeners’ interpretation of the music depends on how much the emotions resonate with them or how much it allows them to connect with their situations. In many instances, the listeners create new meanings for the music, and this may be even more interesting than the composer intended it.

It is therefore imperative for every composer to treat each piece of music as an incredible opportunity to share their emotions as a gift for others to find their footing. Music can never be made selfishly so as much as the composer pours their feelings into the song, they should hope to see it transform lives more than anything else.