A Post Trip Reflection

Our last few days before heading home were spent back in Vienna. While we did see some amazing performances in Vienna, including the Vienna Symphony and the opera Otello, I spent most of my time just enjoying the familiar city. 

During our 22 hours of travel time back home I spent a lot of time reflecting on our trip as a whole. By the end of our trip, I felt that I had become desensitized to the beauty of the music that we had seen. A new standard had been set and everything was meeting it, but because everything was meeting it I began to expect that beauty from every performance. I didn’t realize just how much my standards for music had been changed until I was sitting in Choral Union rehearsal. We were doing a simple warm-up that included singing chords, a warm-up that is relatively easy to be in tune, and I kept feeling that we were never singing them in tune. I felt off throughout the entire first half of rehearsal, as everything felt as if it wasn’t quite in tune. I realized in the 10-minute break in rehearsal what was going on. Throughout the past month, I have been hearing music that is either performed so accurately that it’s incredibly in tune or listening to music on Spotify that can be electronically altered to be perfectly in tune. I was so used to hearing everything so perfectly, that being in a rehearsal where that wasn’t the case made me feel so off. All that being said, that is definitely the only negative effect this trip had on me, and honestly, that’s the best negative effect I’ve ever had from a trip. 

I learned so much more than I thought I would on this trip about not only music and composers but also culture and how culture affects all aspects of life, including music. I noticed cultural differences from each country and even each city. I became so much more self-aware about my own cultural ideologies, especially when it comes to social norms, such as putting your feet up on a seat (which you could get fined for, but at the very least would get yelled at). I leaped out of my comfort zone in so many different ways, including “getting lost” in cities on purpose, talking to locals, and, most surprisingly, trying a ton of new food! I got to so much exposure to some great music ensembles as well as pieces (some of which I’ve actually added to my Spotify playlists). I am so lucky to have had this experience, and can’t wait to apply what I’ve learned on this trip to the rest of my studies and my career in the future.