The essay is an important outcome of your study this semester. Congratulations on its completion! Take time to consider the following questions about some of the specific process that you followed to understand your work.

How does music move you?

Reflect on how the pieces that we studied for the first essay changed in meaning as you got to know something about their context. Compare that experience to a piece of music that is particularly important to you. What is the nature of that importance?

Is the emotional power of music the same as the impact of well-written argument?

Can you describe how the texts came into focus? What was the entry point to a difficult text for the first essay that you struggled to understand? How did the text become more meaningful?

          While writing the my first essay of the year I discovered that the composers who wrote the peices we studied in class wrote with passion. They didn't necessarily care about what society felt towards them but more to how the music affected them and those who listened to them. Music moves people and me specifically by the emotion it brings and its ability to bring people together. In my experience, I have seen musicians bring people together under the best and worst circumstances. For example, after the Sandy Hook shooting which was 5 minutes from where I lived pop singer Ingrid Michaelson came and did a recording of "somewhere over the rainbow" with survivors from the incident.  Ingrid Michaelson was able to bring the town together under such tragic circumstances by using the power of music. It was a beautiful thing for these children to come together and sing for the loss of their teachers and peers. This example alone in my opionion answers that the emotional power of music has a GREATER impact than text. Anything could be written about the Sandy Hook incident but it was the music that brought anyone from children to adults together to morn and  celebrate the lives of those who passed away

            For me specifically, I had trouble with understanding Decartes' Fourth Meditation of Truth and Error. I had trouble connecting the misconception of truth in my essay. It became more meaningful for me when I was able to find the distortion of music and how it becomes a misconcieved truth.