Welcome The Colorado Symphony knows you value the musicurious youth concert experience for your students and that you want it to be positive and inspirational for them. The 2015/16 Youth Concerts take your students into the world of orchestration, exploring how composers use the orchestra’s instruments to create colors, characters, places, and emotions. Your students will hear pieces of music designed to highlight each of the four instrument families in the orchestra and then delve into a discovery process with excerpts from Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet Cinderella. Critical listening, investigative and analytical skills will come into play during the time you prepare your students and at Boettcher Concert Hall. The Youth Concert experience as well as these materials support the Colorado Department of Education’s Common Core outcomes for 21st century skills. They have been designed so that you can guide your students through a discovery process. Do as much as you can! Preparing For Your musicurious Concert Experience Students will get the most out of their concert experience if they engage in active listening activities prior to attending. These materials provide you with some suggestions. The most important thing to do is listen freely and often to symphonic music, especially the selections for this concert. • Students will have a more personalized experience by learning facts about the composers, the Colorado Symphony, and Boettcher Concert Hall. • Students, especially those who are attending a concert for the first time, will engage more successfully when they understand the behavior expectations of the concert hall and are given a chance to practice at school beforehand. Youth Concert Preparation 1 of 11 1. Begin by touring the Get to Know the Instrument Families of the Symphony Orchestra page. 2. Transition into Lesson 1, listening and discussing the musical selections that highlight each family of instruments, found on the About The Composers page. 3. Continue with Lessons 2 and 3, exploring orchestration choices with Prokofiev’s music. 4. The Journal Assignment following both lessons also includes a reflective assignment post field trip. 5. Finally, there are two short Activity Pages for students to complete by referencing their About The Composers page. Students may do these activities before or after the field trip. TEACHER PACKET: PAGES 3 - 4 STUDENT PACKET: PAGES 4 - 5 TEACHER PACKET: PAGES 5 - 6 STUDENT PACKET: PAGES 2 - 3 TEACHER PACKET: PAGE 8 STUDENT PACKET: PAGE 6 TEACHER PACKET: PAGE 9 - 10 STUDENT PACKET: PAGES 7 - 8 TEACHER PACKET: PAGES 7 - 8 • Before you enter Boettcher Concert Hall, make sure to turn off cell phones and other electronic devices. • Listen attentively so you can hear and remember every note. We want you to talk about the concert on the bus ride back to school and at home later! • Feel free to clap and show your appreciation for the performance when the conductor has lowered his arms. The musicians really like your enthusiastic clapping with the music is finished! • Students may wear whatever they’d like. Enjoying and engaging in a shared concert experience with the Colorado Symphony is more important than what they wear to the concert.
Transcript
WelcomeThe Colorado Symphony knows you value the musicurious youth concert experience for your students and that you want it to be positive and inspirational for them. The 2015/16 Youth Concerts take your students into the world of orchestration, exploring how composers use the orchestra’s instruments to create colors, characters, places, and emotions. Your students will hear pieces of music designed to highlight each of the four instrument families in the orchestra and then delve into a discovery process with excerpts from Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet Cinderella. Critical listening, investigative and analytical skills will come into play during the time you prepare your students and at Boettcher Concert Hall. The Youth Concert experience as well as these materials support the Colorado Department of Education’s Common Core outcomes for 21st century skills. They have been designed so that you can guide your students through a discovery process. Do as much as you can!
Preparing For Your musicurious Concert ExperienceStudents will get the most out of their concert experience if they engage in active listening activities prior to attending. These materials provide you with some suggestions. The most important thing to do is listen freely and often to symphonic music, especially the selections for this concert.
• Students will have a more personalized experience by learning facts about the composers, the Colorado Symphony, and Boettcher Concert Hall.
• Students, especially those who are attending a concert for the first time, will engage more successfully when they understand the behavior expectations of the concert hall and are given a chance to practice at school beforehand.
Youth Concert Preparation
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1. Begin by touring the Get to Know the Instrument Families of the Symphony Orchestra page.
2. Transition into Lesson 1, listening and discussing the musical selections that highlight each family of instruments, found on the About The Composers page.
3. Continue with Lessons 2 and 3, exploring orchestration choices with Prokofiev’s music.
4. The Journal Assignment following both lessons also includes a reflective assignment post field trip.
5. Finally, there are two short Activity Pages for students to complete by referencing their About The Composers page. Students may do these activities before or after the field trip.
• Before you enter Boettcher Concert Hall, make sure to turn off cell phones and other electronic devices.
• Listen attentively so you can hear and remember every note. We want you to talk about the concert on the bus ride back to school and at home later!
• Feel free to clap and show your appreciation for the performance when the conductor has lowered his arms. The musicians really like your enthusiastic clapping with the music is finished!
• Students may wear whatever they’d like. Enjoying and engaging in a shared concert experience with the Colorado Symphony is more important than what they wear to the concert.
The Colorado Symphony ConductorsThe conductor is one of the most important people in the orchestra because they get all of the musicians to play together as one big instrument. The Colorado Symphony has five conductors:
Meet Associate Conductor Christopher DragonColorado Symphony musicurious Youth Concerts will be conducted by Associate Conductor Christoper Dragon. This is Christopher’s first year as Associate Conductor of the Colorado Symphony. He came all the way from Australia to be the Associate Conductor of the Colorado Symphony! In addition to conducting professional orchestras, he has worked with and for students conducting the West Australian Youth Orchestra, youth concerts of the Western Australia Symphony, and the Princess Galyani Vadhana Youth Orchestra in Thailand. In April of 2015, Christopher made his debut at the Sydney Opera House conducting the Sydney Symphony Orchestra with Australian singer/songwriter Josh Pyke. Since coming to Colorado he has conducted Colorado Symphony concerts at Red Rocks with Diana Krall, a staged production of The Music Man, and at Boettcher Concert Hall with ukulele master Jake Shimabukuro.
Associate Conductor Christopher Dragon
Music DirectorAndrew Litton
Conductor LaureateMarin Alsop
Chorus DirectorDuain Wolfe
Assistant ConductorAndres Lopera
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Get To Know The Instrument Families Of The Symphony OrchestraYour Colorado Symphony Orchestra is made up of 80 musicians playing instruments from one of four groups, or families, of instruments. Here are some facts about each instrument family.
The Brass Family
Brass family instruments are all made of metal. Brass players buzz their lips inside a round mouthpiece to produce the sound. If you look closely you’ll see that all of the brass instruments are one long tube that curves around becoming wider and bell shaped at the end. Brass players change pitches, or notes, by changing the pressure of their buzzing lips. Modern brass instruments help with these pitch changes by using valves or a slide which tricks the instrument into thinking its tube is longer or shorter than it is. If the tube is longer the air inside is vibrating more slowly which helps produce lower pitches. If the tube is shorter the air inside is vibrating more quickly which helps produce higher pitches. The trumpet has the smallest length of tube and therefore plays the highest pitches. French horn’s tube is longer and can play lower notes. Next is trombone, and finally the tuba which plays the lowest notes in the brass family. All that vibrating air on a metal surface causes the sound to proj-ect in a direct and loud way. For this reason they are often used to signal something important that demands your immediate attention.
The Strings FamilyBASS
CELLO
VIOL A
VIOLIN
String family instruments are all made of wood and produce their sound by moving a stick with horse hair on it called a bow back and forth across the strings. String instruments of the orchestra each have only 4 strings, so to get additional pitches the players press their fingers down in various different spots on the string to trick it into thinking it’s longer or shorter. Just like the brass instruments’ tubes, the shorter the string is the higher the pitch, and the longer the string is the lower the pitch. The bass has the longest strings and therefore makes the lowest pitches. Much smaller than the bass but still played in an upright way is the cello, which makes the next to lowest pitches in the string section. The viola looks almost exactly like the violin and is played on the shoulder, but because it’s bigger and has longer strings than the violin it plays medium high notes. The violin plays the highest notes because it is the very smallest and has the shortest strings. Wood is a porous material which makes the sound warm, rich, and not as directed or loud as the brass instruments can be. Because the bow can make very long sustained sounds as well as never needing to breathe in order to play, string instruments are often used to create long luscious melodies and lots of never ending fast notes.
TUBA
FRENCH HORN
TROMBONE
TRUMPE T
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The Percussion Family
The Woodwind Family
TIMPANI
HARP
SNARE DRUM
MARIMBA PIANO
C YMBALS
TRIANGLE
BASSOON
CL ARINE T
OBOE
FLUTE
Woodwind instruments are made of a combination of wood and metal. Like the brass instruments they are constructed from a tube, but unlike the brass instruments there are holes in the tube which can be covered or left open by keys or the player’s fingertips. Covering and uncovering the holes tricks the tube into thinking it’s longer or shorter which produces lower or higher pitches. To make a sound on the flute the player must blow air across an opening near the top of the flute, just like getting a sound from blowing across the top of a bottle. The clarinet uses a single flat piece of wood called a reed which vibrates against a mouthpiece as the player blows through it. Unlike the brass mouthpiece this one is used inside the player’s mouth. The bassoon and oboe use a reed which has been specially carved, folded in half, tied together, and then cut at the very top. These two pieces of reed buzz against one another when the player blows air through it. Each of the woodwind instruments sounds different mostly due to the way the sound is produced. The bassoon is large and gets a lively and sometimes buzzy sound to its low notes. The clarinet, a medium sized instrument, can sound very smooth and play extremely softly. The oboe has a directed and clear quality similar to the trumpet but in a more plaintive and searching way. The flute has a beautiful light and airy sound which helps its high pitches float right into our ears. Because the woodwind family instruments sound so different from one another they are often used as individual soloists in the orchestra and to provide interesting color combinations with other instruments.
Percussion instruments are those instruments which produce their sound by shaking, scraping, striking, or plucking. There are more percussion instruments than can possibly be listed and they are made from nearly any kind of material you can imagine! Percussion is the most versatile family of instruments when it comes to colors of sound. From the low timpani to the martial snare drum, the splashy cymbal to the shimmering triangle, the precise xylophone to the restless tambourine, the percussion section provides rhythm, color, punctuation and points of interest to the sound of the orchestra.
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About The Composers
PAUL DUK AS - OC TOBER 1 , 1865 - MAY 17, 1935
Paul Dukas lived most of his life in Paris, France. Dukas’ mother was a pianist and was his first teacher. He began composing music at age 14 and ended up teaching many great composers at the Paris Conservatory, including two of Mexico’s most famous composers Manuel Ponce and Carlos Chávez. Dukas was very hard on himself and destroyed many of his compositions that he thought weren’t good enough. Luckily, he didn’t feel that way about his ballet La Péri, “The Fairy”, and even added the fanfare at the beginning to quiet the audience down so they could hear his music better! Dukas is most famous for writing The Sorcerer’s Apprentice which was used in Walt Disney’s Fantasia.
Listen to Fanfare from La Péri (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZMpM2PAAnU). Ask your students to comment on why Dukas exclusively chose brass instruments for the fanfare to signal to the audience that it’s time to start the concert. Audiences used to be much noisier. If audience behavior was quiet and concentrated like it is today do your students think Dukas might have made a different choice? What different ideas might your students have for a fanfare? Why?
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH - MARCH 31, 1685 - JULY 28, 1750
Johann Sebastian Bach spent his whole life living and working in Germany. There were many musicians in his family. His father was his first music teacher, and after that he studied music with his much older brother, Johann Christian Bach. He loved learning new music and once walked 280 miles just to hear another composer’s concert! Bach also loved puzzles and often wrote them into his music. He thought he was a pretty great composer, even though other composers of his time began to tell him he was “old fashioned”. He had a special signature that showed his confidence and also his affinity for puzzles. He wove his initials together forward and backward and then put a king’s crown on top!
Bach composed many pieces of music in his lifetime and is considered to be the “inventor” of the basic rules composers use to write harmony. Air from Suite 3 for string orchestra is one of Bach’s most popular pieces of music.
Listen to Air from Suite #3 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzlw6fUux4o). In this composition Bach uses the lower strings – cello and bass – for a “walking” bass line, and the upper strings – violin and viola – for interwoven melody and harmony. How do your students think this might sound different if the roles were reversed? Why?
Composers & ListeningLesson 1
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BENJAMIN BRIT TEN - NOVEMBER 22, 1913 - DECEMBER 4 , 1976
Benjamin Britten lived in England for most of his life, but also lived in New York for a few years during World War II as an artistic ambassador. When he was young his mother started to teach him piano, though he quickly became better than her! He also learned to play viola and began to be interested in composition, all by the age of ten. It didn’t stop him from playing tennis and cricket, a British form of baseball. Benjamin Britten was a hard worker who loved playing and writing music. He was invited to learn from some of England’s best composition teachers and ended up composing more than 65 major pieces of music. One of his best known composi-tions is The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, which he wrote for an educational movie featuring the London Symphony.
Listen to Variation M from The Young Person’s Guide to the Symphony (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tjdo9N9BZmE). Challenge your students to listen closely for the percussion instruments that Britten uses. Which ones are used for melody? Which are used for rhythm? There are instruments from another family playing in this percussion variation. How are they used to highlight or compliment the percussion instruments?
JOHN WILLIAMS - FEBRUARY 8 , 1932
John Williams (the only living composer whose music you’ll hear) was born in New York. His father was a jazz drummer and two of his brothers are jazz musicians and conductors as well. Williams studied piano, conducting, and composition and played jazz concerts throughout his early years. He first got into film work as a pianist and then began composing music for television and movies in 1958 when he was just 26 years old! John Williams has been nominated for 49 Academy Awards, second only to Walt Disney. His most famous movie soundtracks include Jaws, Star Wars, and Harry Potter, but he has also composed 15 concer-tos and 23 pieces of music for symphony orchestra. Nimbus 2000 is from the first three Harry Potter films and is a great piece of music for showcasing the woodwind instruments.
Listen to Nimbus 2000 played by the Colorado Symphony woodwinds (https://soundcloud.com/cosymphony/cso-nimbus-2000). Ask your students to comment on why they think John Williams decided to exclusively use woodwinds. How is it successful in portraying a flying broomstick? What different instrument choices might your students make if they were to write a piece of music about flying or being in a fanciful place?
SERGEI PROKOFIE V - APRIL 23, 1891 - MARCH 5, 1953
Although Sergei Prokofiev traveled to many places, he lived most of his life in Russia. He first learned to play piano from his mother who also noticed he had a lot of talent for composing his own music. When he was just five years old Prokofiev made his mother write down a piece he composed using only the white keys on the piano since he was having trouble learning how to use the black keys. By the time he was nine years old he started composing his first opera. Prokofiev was also interested in chess; managing to play against world champions and even beating one in 1914 when he was just 23. All his life he kept a chess set on top of his piano in case he needed a break from composing music. He wrote his opera The Love For Three Oranges in 1921 while traveling in America. He wrote his ballet Cinderella back at home in Russia, finishing it in 1944. You might know Peter and the Wolf, one of Prokofiev’s most popular compositions for orchestra.
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Explore March Music1. Ask your students what musical elements they think are necessary to make music sound like a march. Is there a particular
instrument or group of instruments that your students think might be necessary to convey the sound and feeling of a march? Does a march need to have a particular tempo, and if so what might it be? What occasions or situations might be best supported by march music?
2. List their answers on the board, and then listen to one or two minutes of each of the marches below to discover which of these musical elements might be present.
• Tchaikovsky Nutcracker “March of the Toy Soldiers” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmlEmi2HxjY)
• Elgar Pomp and Circumstance March #1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tUVmmMCEwc)
• Sousa Washington Post March (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpIUTjUFm3U)
3. What did they hear that supported their list? What surprising or unexpected elements did they hear?
4. Teach your students to sing the main theme of Prokofiev’s March from The Love For Three Oranges.
5. Prokofiev made two other versions of The Love For Three Oranges: a concert suite of excerpts from the opera, and a transcription of the suite for solo piano. Both of these include the March. Listen to the solo piano version (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUHnINYiejs) and then ask your students to imagine how it might sound for full orchestra. You may want to listen to it once and then facilitate a second directed listening with specific questions such as: What instru-ments might be used for the march beat? For the melody? List their answers on the board.
6. Now listen to the full orchestra version (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q0toEhKRWk). Ask your students what they discovered about Prokofiev’s choices for instruments, dynamics, and support for rhythm and melody. How did Prokofiev use the orchestra for coloring the sounds of the march? Which choices did he make that matched the students’ answers? Which were unusual or surprising? How might your students have orchestrated the solo piano version differently? Why?
7. Prokofiev uses this same march theme in his ballet Cinderella during a scene at the ball in which oranges are served as refreshments. Listen to this version of the March music (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28C1xjZMTh4). Ask your students to listen carefully for the instruments playing the theme [low strings]. What changes did Prokofiev make to the music? Does it still sound like a march? Why or why not? Why do your students think Prokofiev made the music sound different for the ballet scene rather than reusing the opera scene March version? How do the orchestration choices support the scene and story in each version?
Prokofiev’s “March” from The Love For Three Oranges and “Refreshments” from CinderellaLesson 2
The Love For Three Oranges is an opera composed by Sergei Prokofiev and premiered in Chicago in 1921. The “March” depicts a scene from the opera when the main character, the Prince, has been cursed by a witch to become obsessed by a love for three oranges and immediately marches off to find them.
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Prokofiev’s ballet, CinderellaLesson 3
Discover How Orchestration Supports A Story1. Prokofiev’s ballet Cinderella is based on the familiar folk tale whose origin dates back to ancient China. His ballet music
was very successful and he later condensed it into a set of concert suites to be played by the orchestra without dancers. Your students will hear music for the scenes Cinderella Goes to the Ball, Waltz, and Midnight from Suite #1 performed by the Colorado Symphony. These selections happen right in the middle of the tale. Remind your students about this part of the story. Cinderella has been transformed into a beautifully dressed young lady with those famous glass slippers and is on her way to the ball. She dances a grand waltz at the ball, but then suddenly realizes it’s getting close to midnight when the spell will be broken and she runs away leaving a slipper behind.
2. Prokofiev needed to compose music that conveyed character, setting, action, and state of mind in each of these scenes. Ask your students to consider Cinderella’s character. Brainstorm together how she might feel to be dressed up on her way to the royal palace, dancing at the ball, or suddenly realizing her spell would be broken. Next ask your students to think of some ways the instruments of the orchestra might be used to create Cinderella’s character, anticipation/excitement, dancing at a fancy party, anxiety, and a ticking clock. What are some ways instruments of the orchestra could be used that would be wrong or silly for this list? Why? Write their answers on the board.
3. Listen to each of the selections below. What did your students notice about Prokofiev’s choices? How successful do the students think Prokofiev’s ideas were vs. their own in conveying the story elements in each of the scenes? Was there anything surprising or unexpected about Prokofiev’s choices? What were they and why?
• Cinderella Goes to the Ball (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV_oWTrZLx4)
Journal AssignmentNow that you have familiarized your students with Prokofiev’s music and his use of the instruments of the orchestra to support story elements like character, setting, action, and state of mind, engage them in the journal activity on Page 6 of their Youth Concerts Preparation packet, before and again after the performance.
Student & Teacher Discount Tickets
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Thank you for bringing your students to hear the Colorado Symphony! Please print and post the Student/Teacher Discount Ticket flier included on the last page of this packet. This special ticket price is good for nearly all of the Colorado Symphony’s performances throughout the season.
Visit our web site for more details: http://www.coloradosymphony.org/Tickets/Students-Teachers.
Countries & LanguagesActivity 1
France
French
noire
United States
English
quar ter note
Russia
Russian
четвертная нота
England
English
crotchet
G ermany
G erman
Vier telnote
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
BENJAMINBRIT TEN
PAULDUK AS
JOHNWILLIAMS
SERGEIPROKOFIE V
Match the language to the composer whose music you’ll hear played by the Colorado Symphony!Below is a list of languages, countries, composers and words that mean “quarter note”. Match the composer to the correct language, country and “quarter note” words.
There are 3 more languages and countries included than composers, so be careful!
COUNTRY VietnamGermanyRussiaEnglandUnited StatesFranceMexicoKenya
L ANGUAGESpanishEnglishFrenchVietnameseSwahiliRussianEnglishGerman
Take a look at this world map. There is a star on every country representing the home of a composer whose music you’ll hear played by the Colorado Symphony. Their music is coming a long way to your ears - thousands of miles! What if the composers wanted to travel to Boettcher Concert Hall? How might they have done it during their lifetime?
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
BENJAMINBRIT TEN
SERGEIPROKOFIE V
PAULDUK AS
Match each composer to the mode of transportation they might use:
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