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Part III: Personal response through a musical piece and an explanatory essay. 

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Part III: Personal response through a musical piece and an explanatory essay. 

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Music has always been my most preferred way to comfort and express myself freely. I have been playing my violin for almost eleven years now, and I believe that instruments are powerful tools to share feelings with other people. My appreciation for music brought me here to express my opinion and emotion about the question, "is knowing more – better". Leonard and I worked together to play a duet from the 1st and 5th movements of Serenade for Strings by Dvorak, and we each interpreted the pieces with our own understandings of the question.
The first movement, Moderato, was written during the successful and bright years of the composer. The movement starts with violin's melody, the theme of the whole piece. It has a soft, calm, and relaxing tune in E major, which creates a light, happy atmosphere. After a short pause of the melody, the movement takes on a brighter rhythm that also shares positive and happy energy. With the soothing melody of the violin accompanied by cello, I wanted to introduce a peaceful mood during a character's state of ignorance. In the Truman Show and Oedipus the King, both Truman and Oedipus are portrayed as carefree and happy when they are not exposed to the truths that will later haunt them. Reading the story of Oedipus especially changed my view dramatically on how ignorance can be better for an individual than knowing the truth. I used to naturally think that knowledge is strength and necessity, but after I observed what happened to the characters that faced the revelation of truth, I realized that knowing more is not always better. The characters had relatively good lives before they had to face the truths, and I strongly believe in the concept of "white lies". For the sake of emotional stability and mental health, not knowing is more relaxing and relieving, thus is better for individuals.

Finale starts off with a surprise with powerful short notes and a fierce melody. The sharp, non-harmonic notes and the forte dynamic together creates intense, unsettling atmosphere. The descending notes are soon followed by change of rhythm: violin and cello melodies chasing after each other. This technique fabricates the tension and restlessness in the movement. We ended the recording with a D# after only playing from the beginning to section A, because I wanted to end on a negative note (haha punny;) rather than going through the transition section in the piece and ending with a G major. What I implied in this movement was the surprise of knowing the truth and the devastating wave of emotions that follows. Through the strong harsh notes and rhythms, I expressed the consequences of knowledge, which could be unpleasant and chaotic at times. These emotions were presented clearly in Allegory of the Cave, where the prisoners who never left the cave tried to kill their mate who came back from the outside world and claims to know more. The prisoner who escaped the cave felt the obligation to share his knowledge with others, and he felt uneasy and desolated when the other prisoners rejected him. This attribute of guilt and anxiousness was also highlighted in The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. The people who left from Omelas apparently felt so uncomfortable and guilty knowing the truth of their Utopian society that they decided to go against the social norm. Thus, the intense and uneasiness are well conveyed through the fifth movement of the Serenade.

Overall, I am very satisfied with how the Serenade matched my interpretation of the prompt "is knowing more – better". I hope that my playing helps the viewers to gain deeper understanding of the burden and emotion of the unwanted knowledge.

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Written from Sylvia's perspective in Jocasta poem style.

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Graphical interpretation from Antigone's perspective.