At his senior recital on Nov. 3 in Lang Concert Hall, music and honors mathematics major Josh Mundinger \u201918 will perform selections of Bach\u2019s 24 preludes and fugues (The Well-Tempered Clavier), Shostakovich\u2019s Opus 87 from his 24 preludes, and Chopin\u2019s B Minor Sonata. He has played the piano since he was six years old, yet his most enthusiastic comments concerned music theory and its mathematical elements.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I were to continue music academically, it would probably be in theory, especially because I would try to connect that to my interest in math as well,\u201d he said. \u201cJon Kochavi, I have him now in a seminar in music theory and that\u2019s been really enjoyable. It, for one [thing], touches on these mathematical connections, and we\u2019ve been getting into weird music, and that\u2019s something I really enjoy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mundinger\u2019s love for music theory animated his speech and actions as he described Chopin\u2019s exploratory B Minor Sonata. \u201cThere\u2019s these small little melodic fragments that are constantly trading off and appearing and disappearing and they slide together in really interesting ways,\u201d he said, emphatically moving his hands in waves as he visualized the different melodic lines, harmonic shifts and textures all simultaneously present in the piece.<\/p>\n
Mundinger first heard the sonata performed by professional pianist Ilya Poletaev at Swarthmore and the crescendo of the piece convinced him to study it. \u201cThe moment that really made me sit up in my seat was this chromatic scale setting in the bass,\u201d he said, raising his arms and stretching them wider and wider to represent the range of the scale. \u201cThe bass line has this chromatic scale that goes up the piano and is crescendoing and the tension just builds and builds and builds.\u201d<\/p>\n
He values exploration of music so much that he dared to go against Beethoven lovers when he was younger. \u201cI said I didn\u2019t like Beethoven and I\u2019m not really sure why,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe it\u2019s just because I didn\u2019t want to accept what other people told me was good.\u201d\u00a0Despite his former disdain for Beethoven\u2019s music, he has found that his study of the composer in high school and at Swarthmore have made Beethoven into a formative influence on him. \u201cMusic 13 and 14–in that class, I learned a lot about the music of Chopin and Beethoven and these Romantic composers that have been that cornerstone of my piano music made a huge impact on how I approach that repertoire,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
For the 16 years he has been playing piano, Mundinger has preserved his passion for music and music theory by tackling new composers, new techniques and new forms of music, from Chopin\u2019s \u00e9tudes to the \u201cweird music\u201d he studies in his music theory seminar, \u00a0because they inspire him to push his skills further and get into the \u201cnitty-gritty\u201d of the music.<\/p>\n
At 12, he learned the oboe. He performed new piano pieces he had learned for the prelude, postlude, and offering of the Lutheran church his family attended in his hometown of Boulder, CO, and even worked on learning the organ around age 16.<\/p>\n
He has played chamber music since he was a freshman, at first in a piano trio with Noah Rosen \u201918 and Jasmine Sun \u201918, then in a quartet when violist Ayaka Yorihiro \u201920 joined. And during his semester in Budapest junior year, he continued to play solo piano.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think for me a lot of [my interest] comes from renewing the type of music I\u2019m listening to, renewing the styles that I\u2019m playing, not just settling for the same composers,\u201d he said. \u201cEventually you stop growing and\u2026you get all you can from a particular genre, a particular composer, a particular set.\u201d<\/p>\n
After leaving Swarthmore, Mundinger will continue to play solo piano. Mundinger also\u00a0plans to pursue a Ph.D in mathematics. He feels he will miss fellow music majors and their respect for musical exploration and individual taste.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone has a deep respect for each other\u2019s music-making. Everyone has different aesthetics [and] different ideas about what music is good and yet we\u2019re able to talk to each other and our friends, so that\u2019s something I really enjoy about this particular community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bayliss Wagner ’21<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At his senior recital on Nov. 3 in Lang Concert Hall, music and honors mathematics major Josh Mundinger \u201918 will perform selections of Bach\u2019s 24 preludes and fugues (The Well-Tempered Clavier), Shostakovich\u2019s Opus 87 from his 24 preludes, and Chopin\u2019s B Minor Sonata. He has played the piano since he was six years old, yet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7402"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7402"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7404,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7402\/revisions\/7404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/academics\/music-and-dance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}