Kindergrass Four Songs Composed for Children with Poems by Shel Silverstein by Forrest Marowitz A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree, Bachelor of Arts (Music) Colorado College March 12, 2013 Approved by Date Ofer Ben-Amots Date Victoria Lindsay Levine Date Diana Anderson 2 Kindergrass Four Songs Composed for Children with Poems by Shel Silverstein For my capstone project, I have set four poems by Shel Silverstein to music for children. This project combines two areas of study, music composition and music education. Raising the standard for music education in America is a strong personal interest, and my overall goal is to compose educational as well as entertaining music for young children. Each song is interactive in some way, and has been recorded with the help of both professional musicians and young children. This paper describes how I created the project, from composing the songs to learning musical pedagogy. The paper is presented in five sections. The first section introduces general music education for young children, followed by a biography of Shel Silverstein and analyses of the four poems I selected. The third section discusses children’s albums, while the fourth section describes the composition and recording process I underwent during this project. A conclusion section revisits the objectives of my project as well as summarizes my experiences during this time. Music Education For Young Children At its basic level, educating children in music is not much different from educating adults. In fact, since children have a higher propensity for learning new information than adults, it would seem natural for people to be exposed to music theory at a young age. For both children and adults, the basic structure for learning music is the same. However, the way in which musical concepts are taught to children is completely different from the way music is taught to adults. According to Michon Rozmajzl and Rene Boyer-White in Music Fundamentals, Methods, and Materials for the Elementary Classroom Teacher (1990), these elements can be 3 separated into several categories. Children are taught everything from the definition of a beat and reading simple rhythmic patterns to singing in simple harmony (Rozmajzl and Boyer-White 1990: 3). In accordance with the national standards for music education, children are supposed to be able to “sing independently, on pitch and in rhythm, with appropriate timbre, diction, and posture, and maintain a steady tempo” (Bluestine 2000: 6). Just as in learning a language, children learn these concepts most efficiently from a mixture of listening, reading, and writing. Music is learned sound-before-sight, although once children’s aural skills improve, “their reading and listening skills will reinforce each other” (Bluestine 2000: 39). Children learning how to read melodies are taught the concept known as skip, step, and repeat; every note in music is a skip, a step, or a repeated note, which makes reading music easier. The music used to teach children includes songs accompanied by the piano or guitar, based on simple chord structures, mostly with movement from the tonic to the dominant. These songs feature simple, catchy melodies, with chord progressions that often repeat with different lyrics, similar to popular nursery rhymes and traditional folk tunes. Often, music taught to children in the classroom has a deep cultural connection, and different songs are learned depending on the season or holiday. Rhythm and beat are taught to children by patching. When patching, one uses both hands in a crossing motion to count out each beat in a measure. Note values are taught using a series of one-syllable sounds that represent different values. A “ta” represents a quarter note or rest, a “ti- ti” eighth note or rest, and a “ti-ri-ti-ri” a sixteenth note or rest. Children are even taught triplets at a young age, using “tri-o-la” or “tri-pa-let” as a counting method. On paper, simple stick notation is used to represent these values (Rozmajzl and Boyer-White 1990:7-14). 4 After they have grasped these concepts, children are taught the grand staff and other aspects of Western notation. However, the most important idea in teaching music to children is to make the learning process fun. Presenting information in an aurally and visually stimulating way helps ensure that children are not being simply entertained by music; making children sing, play, and dance to music in the classroom will help them internalize concepts. A main reason I chose Shel Silverstein as my librettist for this project was his passion for making learning fun and not a chore. Shel Silverstein and His Poetry Shel Silverstein had a long and illustrious career in the arts, and was influential in several art mediums. Born on September 25, 1930, Silverstein grew up a fairly unsocial child who spent most of his time reading, writing, and sketching comics. He had a deep love for books, although never had enough money to satisfy his thirst for reading. The son of hardworking Jewish immigrants, Silverstein spent most of his youth in the library, sketching comics and writing short stories to go with them. He lived in a world of fantasy and developed a unique imagination that, unfortunately, created even more distance between himself and others. His father more or less rejected his desire to explore the world, and pushed him to join the family business and lead a banal life in the suburbs. His grades were mediocre at best, and after graduating from high school, he began studying art at the University of Illinois and the Art Institute of Chicago. However, institutionalized education and Silverstein’s wild imagination did not mesh, and he dropped out due to poor grades. 5 In 1953, Silverstein was drafted into the army, and was “assigned to the Pacific Stars and Stripes to paste up stories and photo features for the paper” (Mercier 1975: no page). This was Silverstein’s first publishing break, although he spent most of his time outside sketching comics. These comics helped him land a job at Playboy magazine after the war, and he began to publish small books and cartoons. This was Silverstein’s first big break, and from there he flourished as a renaissance man in the art world. He wrote hit singles for famous musicians, such as “A Boy Named Sue,” one of Johnny Cash’s biggest hits. He published books for both children and adults including The Giving Tree (1964), which remains a light in the world of children's literature. Silverstein even dabbled in the theater, and wrote mostly one-act plays. But throughout his prolific career, Silverstein never lost his creative spirit. Silverstein was a nonconformist. This shines through his work, and adults often enjoy his books as much as children. In fact, Silverstein disdained most work at the time that was written for children. In the 1960s “there was a trend toward having the illustrations in children’s books look like children drew them” (Rogak 2007: 66). Silverstein understood that what children crave is detail: “Kids want detail. I love Dr. Seuss and kids love Dr. Seuss because there are details. There are things happening in the drawings. If you can’t draw any better than a kid, he doesn’t want to see that” (Rojak 2007: 68). When criticized for his work straddling genres, Silverstein explained that “I would hope that people, no matter what age, would find something to identify with in my books, pick up one and experience a personal sense of discovery” (Mercier 1975: no page). Fittingly, personal discovery is a theme that permeates Silverstein’s work, especially his poetry. Silverstein’s poetry is sporadic, unpredictable, and funny. His three books of poetry, Where the Sidewalk Ends (1974), A Light in the Attic (1981), and Falling Up (1996), all maintain 6 a level of intelligent silliness that defines Silverstein’s style. His characters are imaginative, his topics are unpredictable, and he often takes liberties with the English language. In choosing poems to set to music, I tried to both consider the quality of the poem and its potential as a song. The first poem I chose, “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” is one of Silverstein’s more formal poems, and also one of his most famous: There is a place where the sidewalk ends And before the street begins, And there the grass grows soft and white, And there the sun burns crimson bright, And there the moon-bird rests from his flight To cool in the peppermint wind. Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black And the dark street winds and bends. Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow, And watch where the chalk-white arrows go To the place where the sidewalk ends. Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow, And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go, For the children, they mark, and the children, they know The place where the sidewalk ends. (Silverstein 1974: 64) This poem demonstrates Silverstein’s ability to appeal to both children and adults. His language is sophisticated and evokes otherwordly images. Conjuring moon-birds and asphalt flowers is certainly fun for children, yet has a deeper meaning for adults. In this poem, Silverstein urges adults to remember the innocence and beauty inherent in the world of children. He implores his adult readers to “leave this place where the smoke blows black” and re discover the world where children live, the place where the sidewalk ends. Even though adult life may involve many hardships and responsibilites, Silverstein believes one should never forget how to laugh, play, and imagine.