Simple Girl

During the course of my entire life, I have been invited by friends to two concerts. And by concerts, I mean music written post-1960 and not performed by middle schoolers.  They were 1987 - Echo and the Bunnymen (we're not friends anymore) and 2011 - Journey (I had no idea that people my age still dressed liked that).  So when my sister-in-law suggested we take the girls to see Taylor Swift, I had no idea what to expect.  After waiting almost an entire year for this sold out concert, the question became:  What do we wear?  I decided to pop into our local Justice.  If you have pre-teen girls, I know you've shopped there! The store clerk was decidedly helpful.  She told me not to buy anything at her store, but to go to our local Michael's, buy some $3 T-shirts and make our own concert shirts.  Since it was Taylor Swift's "RED" Concert Tour, the color was decidedly obvious.  Three dollars?  OK.  I'm in! Start by printi...

Photo Courtesy of The Artist With school starting around here this week, most good parents are busy checking off the school supply list, buying new shoes and regulating bedtime.  Apparently, we don't qualify as most good parents.  As a last Hurrah to summer, we brought the kids to see Big Bad VooDoo Daddy.  The concert started at 8 o'clock.  Eight o'clock is supposed to be bed time. On the bright side, we didn't actually witness any voodoo, and Big Bad Daddy seemed to be a rather nice guy.  If you're not familiar with their music, think swing band.  Or, like me, think Jr. High Stage Band.  But better.  Much, much better!  You can see the hard core groupies here in the front row - the ones with the mobster-looking fedoras. Big Bad VooDoo Daddy played with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Perhaps you are familiar with the song, "I Wanna Be Like You", from The Jungle Book ?  That's them. Big Bad Voodoo Teenage Look!  Th...

Antonio Vivaldi (1678 - 1741) Happy Birthday, Vivaldi!   Happy Birthday, Arielle!   Happy Birthday, Blog! It was exactly one year ago today that I started my blogging journey with a very short post on music listening.  I remember hitting that "Publish Post" button with trepidation.  Although nobody actually knew I existed, I was putting myself out there for anyone who potentially wanted to see!  In retrospect, I must say that it has been a very fulfilling blogging year.  There's a certain sense of satisfaction that comes with wrapping up a cooking or baking project, adventure, or just a thought with some nicely arranged photos and some carefully chosen words.  Even if the rest of my life is full of chaos, my blog can still look neat and tidy! Last year, the kids and I started our music listening project with  The Four Seasons .  This piece was chosen, because Arielle discovered that she and the composer, Antonio Vivaldi, shared the same...

The conversation went something like this: Me :   Who remembers the name of this song? Ella :   Taco Bell's Me :   Close - it's Pachelbel's Canon in D.  What do you hear? Ella :   Slow.....Violins......  It sounds happy and sad both.  I think they play it at weddings alot. Insightful, I thought, for a girl who's only been to two weddings, neither of which played Pachelbel's Canon .  Was she already perceiving that weddings are intuitively both happy and sad?  The celebration of new love and that bittersweetness of leaving home?  This is why my children are simply not allowed to date.  Because, if they do, then someday they will leave me.  And if they leave me, then I will make them walk down the aisle to the beautiful, bittersweet happy-sadness of Pachelbel's Canon in D .  This will remind them that while they might be blissfully happy, I am only happy-sad.  Happy-sad like Pachelbel's Canon in D . Although the c...

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827) in 1804, the year he began to work on the Fifth Symphony. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in C minor is perhaps one of the best known compositions in classical music.  Everyone recognizes the ominous four-note opening motif: But how many can identify the second movement?  As we listen our way through significant classical works, I thought it was important for the kids to hear this familiar melody within the context of the entire piece. The Symphony No. 5 in C minor was composed over a period of four years, during the "Middle" period of Beethoven's career.  He repeatedly interrupted this work to prepare other compositions.  The final preparation of the Fifth Symphony, which took place in 1807-1808 was carried out in parallel with the Sixth Symphony, which premiered at the same concert. Beethoven was in his mid-thirties during this time and both his personal life and the world at large was in turmoil.  In his personal life,...

Benjamin Britten, Composer (1913 - 1976) Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Listening to Benjamin Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra  completed our trifecta of children's music education pieces, which also included Saint-Saens' The Carnival of the Animals and Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf . Written in 1946 for an educational documentary film called The Instruments of the Orchestra , T he Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra is one of Britten's best known works.   The subtitle of the piece is "Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell" in which we hear the melody of Rondeau from Abdelazar in a way that shows off the tone colors and capacities of the various sections of the orchestra. In the introduction, the theme is initially played by the entire orchestra, then by each major family of instruments of the orchestra:  first the woodwinds, then the strings, then the brass, and finally by the percussion.  Each variation then fe...

In 1936, Russian composer, Sergei Prokofiev was commissioned by the Central Children's Theatre in Moscow to write a musical symphony for children.  The intent was to cultivate "musical tastes in children from the first years of school."  Intrigued by the invitation, Prokofiev completed Peter and the Wolf in just four days.  Although the debut failed to attract much attention, this playful classic would delight and inspire both children and adults for years to come. Peter and the Wolf is scored for several instruments and each character in the story has a particular instrument or musical theme: Bird: Flute Duck:  Oboe Cat:  Clarinet Grandfather:  Bassoon Wolf:  French Horns Hunters:  Woodwind theme, with gunshots on timpani and bass drum Peter:  String instruments This piece was fun to listen to with the kids and engaged them during our driving time.  After a week of listening, even the five-year old could identify the anima...

If you listen closely, you can hear the music! Arielle, Anna, Samuel and their piano teacher, Mrs. Wetzler

As I prepared for our Spring Break Adventure, I couldn't help but think of those twenty-some hours in the car that would be perfect for......music listening!  Knowing that my idea might not be received with equal amounts of enthusiasm, I tried to think of something fun - something that would let the kids close their eyes for a moment and use their imagination.  So in between videos of Night at the Museum:  The Smithsonian and High School Musical 3 , I slipped in The Carnival of the Animals (Le carnaval des animaux) by the French Romantic composer, Saint-Saens. Camille Saint-Saens 1835 - 1921 Saint-Saens was a serious French composer.  As I imagined him, I thought of my grandfather who looked old to me for the entire 33 years that I knew him.  As we listened to the piece, and the analysis of it by Leonard Bernstein,  it became clear that, just like my grandfather, the very serious Saint-Saens had an intelligent sense of humor!   The Carnival of the...

This week we are leaping out of the Baroque period and back into the twentieth century.  Rhapsody in Blue , by George Gershwin, is a musical composition for solo piano and jazz band.  Written in 1924, it combines elements of classical music with jazz-influenced effects. George Gershwin 1898- 1937 Rhapsody in Blue was commissioned by jazz band leader Paul Whiteman who would premiere the piece in a concert entitled An Experiment in Modern Music .  Although hestitant, Gershwin was eventually persuaded to write the piece, and with only five weeks left until the concert, he began composing the piece on his train journey to Boston.  He told his biographer Isaac Goldberg in 1931: “It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang, that is often so stimulating to a composer – I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise…And there I suddenly heard, and even saw on paper – the complete construction of the Rhapsody, from beginning to end....