Teacher's Guide

Aram Demirjian, Music Director Sheena McCall Young People’s Concerts: Fall 2021 TEACHER’S GUIDE THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK (INSIDE COVER) Table of Contents MUSIC SPEAKS: Program Notes: Our Composers and their Music UNLOCKING THE HIDDEN LANGUAGE OF MUSIC Stravinsky, Greeting Prelude .................................... 2 Greeting Prelude Copland, Variations on a Shaker Melody ................. 2 by Igor Stravinsky Rhea Carmon ............................................................. 3 Price, Concert Overture No. 2 ................................... 3 Simple Gifts by Joseph Brackett, Jr. Michael Rodgers ........................................................ 4 Bizet, Toreador Song ................................................. 4 Variations on a Shaker Melody from Appalachian Spring Gershwin, “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” .............. 5 by Aaron Copland Elgar, ‘Nimrod’ from Enigma Variations ................... 5 Spoken Word Marquez, Conga del Fuego Nuevo ........................... 6 by Rhea Carmon Coleman, Umoja ........................................................ 6 “Go Down Moses,” “Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit,” and “Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen” Audio Link ........................................................................ 7 African American Spirituals, sung by Michael Rodgers Lessons and Activities ............................................... 8-15 Concert Overture No. 2 by Florence Price Resources for Teachers/Audience Job Description ... 16 “Votre Toast Je Peux Vous le Rendre” (Toreador Song) from Carmen Meet the Conductor/What is a Conductor?/ by Gorges Bizet Meet the KSO ........................................................... 17 “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” from Shall We Dance Anatomy of a Symphony............................................... 18 by George Gershwin Student Program Template .................................... 19-20 ‘Nimrod,’ from Enigma Variations by Edward Elgar Sponsors ....................................................................... 21 Conga del Fuego Nuevo by Arturo Marquez What is a Composer? Umoja A composer is a person who writes music. He or she can write music for by Valerie Coleman groups as large as a symphony orchestra, or for a single instrument. Many Program repertoire and artists subject to change times in orchestral works the composer tells a story, and all the different instruments of the orchestra are the actors in the story. Composers can This ear symbol will give students write pieces of music based on many different things, such as dreams, something to listen for in select pieces. places, persons, or poems. Sometimes they even create pieces by mixing several different ones together. A composer has the ability to hear a tune in Watch for this symbol to give you interesting facts, vocabulary words, activities or program notes for students. his head and write it down as notes for instruments. Greeting Prelude (ThingLink 1) There are three verses of “Happy Birthday” in Greeting Prelude. The first and third verses are similar. The notes of the melody are passed Igor Stravinsky from instrument to instrument, and are not always in the expected range (1882-1971) (the fourth note, for example, is an octave higher than expected). The string instruments interject bits and pieces of the melody as background Igor Stravinsky was born on June 5, 1882, near St. accompaniment, especially in the third verse. Petersburg, Russia. His father was a famous opera Stravinsky give the tune first to the horns. singer, and as a child Stravinsky would go with him to The second time, “Happy Birthday” is played by the double bass, tuba, the opera house where he met many famous contrabassoon, and bassoons—low instruments of the orchestra that rarely musicians of the day. He began taking piano lessons get to play the melody. The rhythm is a bit different from the original at the age of nine, but he preferred to make up his song. own music rather than practice the lessons his There is even a version of the melody played backwards in the viola and second violin. teacher assigned. Igor studied law at St. Petersburg The very end of Stravinsky’s version of “Happy Birthday” ends on the University. There he met Vladimir Rimsky-Korsakov, the son of Nikolay Rimsky- “wrong” chord—it doesn’t sound quite as expected. Korsakov, a famous Russian composer who became Stravinsky’s teacher. Variations on a Shaker Theme from Appalachian Spring (ThingLink 3) Stravinsky is best known for his three ballet scores, The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring, which he composed for Serge Diaghilev, the head of the Aaron Copland Russian Ballet. Stravinsky’s music for The Rite of Spring was so daring and (1900-1990) energetic that the first time an audience heard the music, they cheered, protested, and argued among themselves during the performance. This riot in the Aaron Copland was born in 1900 in New York City. His theatre was so loud that the dancers could not hear the orchestra! parents were immigrants from Russia. The family lived above their Brooklyn department store and Aaron often Igor Stravinsky moved to France and Switzerland with his wife and two children helped to run the business. Aaron had four siblings and he and then became a U.S. Citizen in 1945. Stravinsky’s music moved around, too, was very close to his sister, Laurine. She introduced him to and he never really picked one style of music. He wrote Russian-sounding music, ragtime and opera and taught him the basics of playing modern music, one opera and religious music. Time Magazine included him in its the piano. By the age of seven Aaron could make up tunes list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. He was honored with on the piano and he began to write short pieces at the age the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal in 1954 and the Sibelius Prize in of twelve. 1953. Stravinsky died in New York City on April 6, 1971. Copland wrote many different kinds of music, including Greeting Prelude is a set of variations on the famous “Happy Birthday” melody ballets, orchestral music, choral music, and movie scores. He composed at the by Patty and Mildred Hill. Stravinsky first got the idea for the music in 1950. As piano and often recycled music from earlier pieces that he had written. Many of he tells the story: his works explore subjects based on American lifestyles. He is best known for his “I gave the downbeat to begin a rehearsal of Tchaikovsky’s Second ballets, Billy the Kid, Rodeo and Appalachian Spring, and for his orchestral works, Symphony in Aspen one day in the summer of 1950, when instead of the Fanfare for the Common Man and Lincoln Portrait, which are often played on In- doleful opening chord, out came this ridiculously gay little tune. I was very dependence Day concerts. surprised, of course, and quite failed to ‘get it,’ as Americans say…for some time I considered myself the victim of a practical joke.” Copland was a very well known composer during his lifetime and won many awards including the Pulitzer Prize for Appalachian Spring, Academy Awards for The Aspen Orchestra had planned to play “Happy Birthday” for one of the his film scores, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, a Kennedy Center Honor, a orchestra members who had just become a father. Medal of the Arts and a Congressional Gold Medal. Stravinsky composed Greeting Prelude for a concert honoring the 80th birthday of his friend, conductor Pierre Monteux (who had conducted the riotous first Copland composed very little after 1972. He said about his lack of creative ideas, performance of The Rite of Spring). This piece also helped celebrate “It was exactly as if someone had simply turned off a faucet.” He spent the Stravinsky’s own 80th birthday at a New York Philharmonic Young People’s remainder of his life conducting and supporting new composers. He died in North 2 Concert! Tarrytown, New York (now known as Sleepy Hollow) on December 2, 1990. Variations on a Shaker Melody from Appalachian Spring (continued) A chapbook is "a small book or pamphlet containing poems, ballads, or stories. Ragtime—A kind of music that uses a syncopated rhythm. Jazz music grew out of “Burn with the motivation that only creativity can inspire!” ragtime. - Rhea Sunshine Opera—A play having all of most of its text set to music, with arias, recitatives, choruses, duets, trios, etc. sung to orchestral accompaniment. Operas usually have elaborate costuming, scenery, and choreography. Concert Overture No. 2 (ThingLink 4) Score—A special print of music that shows how all the instruments of the orchestra play Florence Price at the same time. The conductor uses a score. (1887-1953) Appalachian Spring is a ballet score originally written for a thirteen-member orchestra. Florence Beatrice Smith Price was the first African It was created at the request of choreographer and dancer, Martha Graham. The American female composer to have a symphony ballet told the story of a spring celebration of the American pioneers of the 1800s after performed by a major American symphony orchestra. building a new Pennsylvania farmhouse. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed her Symphony in E Minor on June 15, 1933. The most famous music from Appalachian Spring is know as A Shaker Melody or “Simple Gifts.” It is introduced by a solo clarinet. The Shaker’s Florence was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1887, were a religious group and this melody is taken from a collection of their to a mixed-race family. Her father was an author, songs. inventor, and dentist who served both white and black patients. He was one of only a few African American Visit the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Learning Lab for a Lesson Plan on Theme and Variations, a beautiful recording of Simple Gifts by Yo-Yo Ma and dentists in the United States at that time. Florence’s mother was a music teacher Alison Krauss, and to build a Listening map (available for print and via Google who taught Florence and her two siblings to play the piano. Florence gave her first Slides). recital at the age of four and published her first musical composition at the age of eleven.

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