What Is A Music Apology?

The ability to mutter the word “sorry” with meaningful urgency, is a term we use often throughout our lifetimes. 

When we think of what an apology imposes, we often correlate this term with a heavy expression of guilt or regret or having done something drastically wrong. 

However, an apology can be very complex and create varying sets of actions. Regarding the relationship between regret and apologies, there usually includes an explanation of what exactly went wrong, followed by an acknowledgment of responsibility, forgiveness, and an offering of repairing the connection that has been broken, to usher an apology. 

The created channels of apologies are usually made by a person or group of people directly to another person or group of individuals but do not always welcome forgiveness or an urgent sense of repairing the relationship. 

With the emotional weight music carries for many individuals, would an apology set to music be more profound and easily acceptable, or would it be deemed inappropriate regarding genuine apologies? 

Are Music Apologies More Successful?

With simple terminology, a musical apology is an apology that has been produced for a set of music. 

This notion may suggest that a musical apology can be viewed as a genre of musical project that translates as communication similar to features and feelings of spoken apology. How can one tell if a music apology works? 

The truth, is that apology success rates are hard to determine as acceptance of apologies is subjective and specific to the parties involved. However, in everyday life individuals regularly analyse and evaluate apology efforts based on sincerity. 

Lack of apology, musical or non-musical can cause feelings of resentment and anger to build and linger on for a substantial period. 

Musical apologies can offer an opportunity for social groups and individuals, to come together through interacting in an emotionally shared activity. 

Written in 1998 for the stolen generations of Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait islanders, the song Sorry Song by Kerry Fletcher is a musical apology dedicated to all First Nation people whose lives have been altered by the policy of Indigenous Child Removals. 

This forced removal of so many Aboriginal children created much loss and suffering that continues to affect descendants and communities. 

However, making timely and appropriate apologies can shift and or impact relationships with those living together within various environments. 

Although apologies are mainly done through spoken words, many scholars believe that the act of putting words into music can tremendously help communicate difficult things. This notion lends to the overall idea that singing apologies might help us communicate more efficiently! 

But, how can one analyse a musical apology? Here are some tips and distinct aspects of musical apologies one can interpret. 

Sound 

Whether it is live music or recorded performance, the sound is a key area of focus referring to musical apologies including timbre, instrumentation, and varying production elements.  

Lyrics

As lyrics can be deemed the most obvious and important part of musical apologies, lyrics can embody many poetic gestures. However, if musical apologies conclude to be distasteful and unintelligible, the apology may not be highly successful. 

Structure 

In much of western art music, the structure can often be based on written records such as scores. It is possible to analyse musical apology through this avenue as one can listen closely to the arrangement of sounds along with the revelation of the relationship in question. 

I’m further detail, structural analysis is often based on a distinct music score that draws concepts, musical vocabulary, and music theory regarding music apology.

Context 

Context can be a broad category covering all the ways a performance of music may be related to its surroundings. 

Additional elements such as visual elements can lend to musical apologies about performance behaviour and audience reactions. 

With a musician’s production of movement and sound, performance analysis surrounding persona, style, physical setup of performance spaces, lighting, and audience seating can easily influence the success of an apology through a musical setting. 

Reception

The reception to a musical apology can be examined by the critical responses people have to the music along with the emotional language the artist uses to describe the apology. 

The reception can range from published reviews, comments from listeners on social media, or simply through audience physical gestures and emotional responses. 

The theories of reception offer a wide range of understanding of how musical meaning can be socially constructed. 

So, it can be concluded that through the dynamic analysis of musical apologies about the sound of music, lyrical abilities, song structure, context, and reception, the success or evaluation of an apology cannot go unnoticed. 

As music continues to bring people together, music can also be the perfect way to convey that endearing “sorry” word.

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