MENI Theme- Excitement and Shock
![Munch, E. (1893). The Scream. [Painting - oil on cardboard]. Nasjonalmuseet: Oslo (Norway). Retrieved from http://www.edvardmunch.org/the-scream.jsp](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/2babe4_e18f8b778a5d49308595ed05292e701f~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_117,h_150,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,blur_2,enc_auto/2babe4_e18f8b778a5d49308595ed05292e701f~mv2.jpg)
Recording Transcript
Kevin: I was so excited when I first arrived here, drowning in the beautiful landscape of Canada. I felt so lucky to be able to study in such a wonderful place. I was very enthusiastic about communicating with people around me. Everything seemed so exciting.
Kandy: But once I started to talk with people in English, I was shocked. It suddenly dawned on me that my spoken English was worlds apart from the English spoken by Canadians. Once the Canadian students started to talk, I was just totally overwhelmed, thinking in my head, “Oh my God! Why are they speaking so fast? Oh my God! Why? Why can’t I speak?”
Composing Process
In this piece, I used an upbeat, uplifting piano melody to communicate the feeling of optimism and excitement participants held for their international education journey when they first arrived in Canada. Then, I used a different, contrasting piano melody to suggest the painful undertone of the unexpected discrepancy between their optimistic outlook and reality. Within the second half of the contrasting melody, I also incorporated chord accents in the upper register to represent the unexpectedness and magnitude of the shock of this discrepancy. Finally, I used an abrupt ending of the upward progressing music, in a contrasting tonality, to further represent the shock of unexpectedness to the audience.
