6 Tips for Teaching Rhythm and Beat

11/21/2019

When children listen to, study, and perform music with a strong sense of rhythmic motion, the exercise brings together a number of important brain activities. Savvy music educators have a number of tips and tricks for teaching rhythm and beat, with a few of them discussed below:

1. You’ve got rhythm, or is that the beat?

Part of learning to develop rhythm is knowing the difference between the rhythm and beat. It’s not only kids who can become confused between the meaning of the two. Here is a simple explanation.

The beat of a piece of music is the regular pulse you can feel underneath its tune. One good analogy: Think of the beat like the ticking of your watch. One way to find the beat is to pay attention to how you find yourself snapping your fingers or tapping your foot along with a composition. That’s the beat. The underlying beat stays the same, regardless of the length of the individual notes in the composition.

On the other hand, the rhythm is contained within the time value of the notes themselves. Many music teachers who work with young children teach them that the rhythm is “how the words go.” Rhythm can be fast or slow, and it can change or alternate its pace. But the underlying beat is unchanging.

2. Start simple.

Traditional nursery rhymes are an excellent way of teaching the difference between rhythm and beat.

One way to do this is to teach children a simple rhyme, like “Baa baa, black sheep, have you any wool?” You can begin by reciting the rhyme aloud in an engaging way, making the beats obvious as you sing by tapping your foot or striking your knee.

A few choruses of chanting the rhyme with you should help to make children confident about the words and the beat. Once children are very sure of the way it goes, you can ask them to help you “catch” the words of the rhyme as they speak them.

As you clap to each individual syllable in the rhyme, they will begin to hear themselves clapping out the rhythm of the piece. Some students may want to dance along to the rhythm, instead of only clapping. Whatever movements they want to make can be helpful in improving their understanding.

You can also take advantage of the fact that many music educators have posted free, downloadable resources online. They include worksheets for mapping out the difference between beat and rhythm.

3. Reinforce the idea of beat and rhythm with movement.

Another simple activity that can help students to grasp the concepts of “beat” and “rhythm” on a neurological level involves simply asking them to turn their heads to look first in one direction and then in the opposite direction, as they clap to the beat and the underlying the rhythm.

4. Help instrumentalists learn about rhythm.

Children who are learning to play an instrument have an additional challenge in front of them in that they will need to translate how their bodies respond to rhythm into the musical notations on a page. Often, students confuse rhythm and beat when trying to interpret a piece of music.

A helpful strategy in this case can begin with having the students place their fingers against their throats and feel their pulse. When they have become acclimated to this steady, basic beat, you can ask them to begin counting notes in two’s and three’s along with the beat.

You can then introduce an activity in which they clap along while you play a tune on the piano in a fashion similar to the aforementioned nursery rhyme activity.

5. Learn to measure music with words.

Some experts note that beginning music students often experience difficulty in grasping the concept of half notes. While the time-tested method of counting beats across a measure of music involves numbers, teachers often find that substituting words or sounds for counting the beat can put the rhythm into better focus for students.

It may also be helpful to distinguish different types of notes with words denoting how fast or slow the tempo is. For example, quarter notes can be said to “walk,” while eighth notes “run.” Using rhythm syllables is another effective way of teaching the concept of note duration. In a method that is analogous to using the solfege syllables (Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do) to teach pitch, a set of rhythm syllables provides students with short, made-up words that represent tangible “hooks” on which to hang the values of individual notes.

The typical way of teaching rhythm in American schools is to begin with these rhythm syllables. Once students have mastered them, they can move on to the substitution of numbers to signify notes’ value.

6. The Kodály Method brings it all together.

The methods of renowned mid-20th century Hungarian composer, musicologist, and educator Zoltán Kodály remain popular with music teachers the world over. Music teachers have taken his basic concepts of music instruction and developed them into a comprehensive method. This graded series of steps in learning musical concepts is applicable not only to young children, but also to beginning music students of any age.
Kodály believed in teaching music through what he called “direct intuition.” The first concept in the Kodály system of teaching music to young children involves getting them to understand the concept of beat at an innate, physical level, as well as understanding the difference between the beat and the rhythm.

To teach rhythm, the Kodály system uses the syllables “ta” and “ti-ti” as its base. These syllables designate, respectively, quarter notes and eighth notes.

Teachers using the Kodály Method often play guessing games by clapping the rhythm of a popular song’s opening notes and challenging students to “name that tune.”

6 of the Ways Music Enhances Concentration, Productivity, and Joy

11/7/2019

A large number of researchers believe that, for people of any age, listening to music while performing tasks at home, work, and school can have a beneficial effect on learning, productivity, and satisfaction. Here are a few facts about this effect:

1. Music improves productivity when working on repetitive tasks.

One team at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom found that playing background music while engaging in repetitive tasks—think spreadsheets, counting objects, and reading email—not only makes time go by more pleasantly, it serves to boost productivity. The authors of the study note that this held true for their test subjects even when they were in the midst of a considerable amount of ambient industrial noise.

2. Music is most effective when it is considered pleasant or neutral by the listener.

A University of Miami music therapy professor discovered that when people hear music that they personally find enjoyable, they tend to start feeling better. Her test subjects—people who worked in information technology—reported finishing their assignments more quickly when listening to music they liked. Additionally, she discovered that the elevation in mood her subjects experienced propelled them on to come up with better ideas and insights related to their tasks.

She concluded that personal choice regarding musical selections is extremely important to the effectiveness of that music in heightening mood and productivity. She went on to observe that over-stressed individuals tend to come to over-hasty conclusions about work tasks. On the other hand, individuals who were able to select their own music could see multiple possible solutions to a problem.

Some investigators have discovered, however, that music we neither strongly like, nor strongly dislike, may be best for workplace productivity. A group of Taiwanese researchers at Fu Jen Catholic University found that extreme reactions—positive and negative—to music made it more difficult to maintain concentration.

3. Music triggers the release of dopamine in the brain.

Biology tells us that the act of listening to music we enjoy releases hormones called dopamine into the brain’s reward center. This is the same reaction we experience when we look at a beautiful scene, drink in the scent of a rose, or eat a delicious meal. One physician at the Mayo Clinic who has studied the way people at work gain focus from listening to music notes that it takes less than an hour a day to achieve the mood-lifting and mind-opening benefits.

4. Music is most effective at increasing productivity when it is instrumental.

One point seems to be consistent across a variety of research studies: the best music for concentration and productivity is wordless. Words that we can understand tend to distract the brain, since they pull us in the direction of trying to make sense of them.

One study found that almost half of office employees in the test group were distracted by human speech. Trying to tune out the background noise of others’ voices won’t work if the music has lyrics. It will merely cause the brain to shift its focus.

5. The tempo of Baroque music may facilitate concentration and learning.

The tempo of a piece of music has a strong impact on how well it facilitates concentration. Numerous studies have shown that music from the Baroque period in particular—think Bach, Vivaldi, Georg Telemann, Henry Purcell, and Jean-Philippe Rameau—aids learning and concentration, which contributes to longer-term retention of new information.

In fact, authors Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder wrote the book Superlearning 2000, an update to their earlier title Superlearning, to further outline exactly how to use the steady, even beats of Baroque music to learn foreign languages, new vocabulary, and a host of other facts, figures, and real-world skills. Fans of the Super-Learning books say that the techniques and helpful resources the authors offer have helped them speed up their learning, recall much more of what they have read, and fully engage both hemispheres of their brains.

Ostrander and Schroeder, who began putting the book together in the 1970s, drew on then-revolutionary research by top psychologists and neurologists. These scientists had discovered that listening to Baroque music in particular was capable of increasing the powers of a person’s concentration and memory. They posited that this was the result of the regular mathematical formulas that lie at the heart of the Baroque tempo.

6. Baroque music may facilitate the production of alpha waves in the brain.

The 50- to 80-beat-per-minute tempo of Baroque, researchers have learned, is comparable to an adult’s resting heart rate. This makes it ideal for stimulating the production of alpha waves in the brain. These alpha waves are known for inducing a mood of deep but focused relaxation.

When human beings are in an alpha state—with their brain waves’ frequency measuring from 9 to 14 hertz, or cycles per second—they are far from being passive or inattentive. A person in an alpha state is calm but alert, and is extremely receptive to taking in and processing new information.

Most of our daily lives are spent in the active beta state, with brain waves of between 15 and 40 cycles per second. This means the alpha state represents a significant reduction in our normal rhythms, giving us more time and space to notice things we may not have noticed before.

5 Notes on the Beauty and Rigor of the Baroque

10/24/2019

Most experts date the Baroque period in classical music from about 1600 to 1750, putting it between the polyphony of the Renaissance and the era of Classicism (the period after the mid-18th century distinguished by the works of composers such as Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert).

Compositions from the Baroque period are typically marked by their grandiosity and drama as well as the numerous ways in which composers used the technique of counterpoint to express musical themes and ideas.

Developments in the music of this period parallel those in the other arts—for example, massive and ornate buildings such as St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and the Caserta Royal Palace in Rome. Venetian Baroque-era churches, built with two opposing galleries, were ideal for the performances of two ensembles of musicians playing at the same time.

A complex form

The concept of two voices or groupings in contrast with one another is a central idea in Baroque composition. Concertos (known in Italian as concerti grossi) featured a solo instrument or voice playing or singing along with a full orchestra. They were a favorite among Baroque composers.

Baroque music tends to emphasize a bass line set against a melody. A cello, for example, might deliver the bass, while a vocalist sings a melody.

The technique of counterpoint is central to the development and performance of Baroque music.

Simply put, counterpoint is the art of combination. A composer working with counterpoint will juxtapose two or more separate melodic lines in a single composition. In counterpoint, individual melodic lines are known as “parts” or “voices.” Each part or voice has a distinct melody.

The term “counterpoint” is sometimes incorrectly conflated with polyphony. Polyphony refers to the presence of at least two individual melodic lines in a composition. Although counterpoint evolved out of polyphonic music, counterpoint is a much more complicated technique. True counterpoint involves a complex handling of the several melodic lines of a composition to fashion an acoustically and emotionally meaningful and harmonious whole.

The organ and the harpsichord are perhaps the instruments audiences most acquaint with Baroque music. During the Baroque period, these instruments offered two keyboards, allowing the musician to transfer from one to the other to create the rich blending of the contrasting sounds.

A centuries-old technique that continues

Composers of the Classical period were usually steeped in the techniques of Baroque composition from their early years. Some, like Mozart and Beethoven, would go on to employ counterpoint extensively in their own later works, written well into the Classical era.

Counterpoint continues to find favor today among musicians, composers, and even mathematicians, who have devoted much effort to explaining its symmetry and intricacy in terms of numerical relationships.

The supreme artistry of Bach

Numerous critics and teachers have found the Brandenburg Concertos of Johann Sebastian Bach to represent a pinnacle of the development of the concerto grosso form, and of the Baroque style itself.

Bach created these works over the span of the second decade of the 18th century, one of the happiest periods of his life. The six compositions masterfully weave together the component threads played by a smaller orchestra and by several solo groups.

Music scholars point out that the scale of the Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 features so many soloists that it is more of a symphony than a concerto, in fact. Bach brought in oboes, horns, a bassoon, and a solo violin. And the third of these concertos features performances from no fewer than three cellos, three violas, and three violins. Unique among these concerti, Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 features not even a single violin; instead, it focuses on lower-voiced string instruments.

Three centuries after their composition, the rich-toned, lilting Brandenburg Concertos remain among the most popular and beloved works in the classical repertoire.

The art of fugue

Bach was a master of the fugue, and many musicologists revere his late work The Art of Fugue as one of his most significant creations.

A fugue is a piece of music—or a part of a larger composition—that offers finely tuned and mathematically pleasing use of a central theme (the "subject") and numerous restatements and reconfigurations of that theme. In a fugue, the subject is taken up by other parts that are successively woven together.

A fugue begins with an exposition, introducing the listener to the central subject. The subject then plays out in different parts, becoming transposed into various keys that serve as “answers” to the essential statement of the subject. A fugue can unfold over as many statements, restatements, and key changes as the composer would like, and can be as short or as long as desired, as well.

Baroque composers worth knowing

Gramophone magazine, one of the world’s premier authorities in classical music criticism, recently put out its 2019 edition of the Top 10 Baroque composers.

Bach heads the list, with the Gramophone team noting that he continues to enjoy a status in music equivalent to that of Shakespeare in literature or da Vinci in the visual arts. The publication particularly recommends Bach’s St. Matthew Passion as a supreme example of his musicianship and of the Baroque style.

Next comes Antonio Vivaldi, whose lavish, ornate compositions echo the culture of his native Venice at the time. Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons is perhaps the best known of his works today. This lilting, exuberant hymn to the beauty of earth’s changing seasons is known for its exquisite craftsmanship.

George Frideric Handel’s lively, upbeat Baroque compositions are other essentials for anyone becoming familiar with the era. His towering oratorio Messiah remains a not-to-be-missed composition for both music lovers and those devoted to the Christian faith.

The experts at Gramophone additionally nominate English composer Henry Purcell, composer of Dido and Aeneas and other operas, to this select group. Claudio Monteverdi, remembered as a bridge between Renaissance polyphony and the early Baroque style, also made the list, as did Domenico Scarlatti, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Georg Philipp Telemann, Arcangelo Corelli, and Heinrich Schutz.

8 Interesting Facts about an Orchestra of Orphans

10/3/2019

Vivaldi | Image by Wikipedia

Antonio Vivaldi, born in Venice in 1678, achieved fame during his lifetime as one of Europe’s greatest composers. His works have continued in popularity over the centuries—his “Four Seasons” and other richly textured concerti, as well as his operas, are still beloved by listeners all over the world. Vivaldi’s influence on the development of Baroque music, particularly on the emerging form of the concerto, cannot be overstated.

Even scholars, however, often overlook how he opened doors for the participation of women in music. Here are a few facts about Vivaldi’s work with an extraordinary group of Venetian female musicians, and how they themselves achieved renown for their gifts in an age when few women and girls had such an opportunity.

“The Red Priest” and the orphanage

Vivaldi worked with the church and orphanage of the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice sporadically from 1703 to 1740. An ordained priest nicknamed “Il Prete Rosso” (“The Red Priest”), most likely due to his vivid red hair, Vivaldi soon ceased to administer the sacraments and concentrated on his work as a composer and teacher.

At the Ospedale, he served as a violin master and, later, a concert master. He also composed large numbers of works to be performed by one of the world’s most accomplished—and largely unknown—musical groups: a chorus and orchestra made up entirely of orphaned girls and young women.

The long history of the orphanage

The Ospedale was a creation of the Middle Ages. Founded by a 14th-century Franciscan priest as a charitable home for orphans, it took in both boys and girls who had lost their families to famine, plague, and other horrors that were common in the Europe of that time. It was attached to the Church of Santa Maria della Pietà, which also served as a public hospital.

Throughout the Middle Ages and early modern period, such institutions—a combination hospital, orphanage, and musical conservatory—flourished in Venice. The Pietà was one of four major ospedali that made the city a must-visit musical destination until the fall of the Venetian Republic at the close of the 18th century.

Marketing a music school

The Ospedale needed a continuous supply of generous patrons in order to feed, house, and clothe the increasing number of children within its walls.

Its most creative—and best remembered—marketing effort involved establishing a girls’ choir, composed of its orphaned singers and musicians. The school would test each child at around age 9, to see if she had the needed flair for music. If a girl showed promise, the school made sure that she would have access to the finest musical education possible. (Researchers believe that many of the girls were not, in fact, orphans at all but the illegitimate children of noblemen, thus providing an additional explanation for the lavish expenditure of funds on a fine musical education.)

Giving young women performers a voice

Beginning in the 1600s, the Ospedale’s girls’ choir performed in religious pageants to which the population of Venice was invited. By the following century, the fame of this orchestra was such that visitors from all over Europe traveled to Venice to hear, incidentally providing significant new revenue streams for the church and orphanage.

Some of the young women performers became legendary, earning nicknames based on their talents. There was “Maria of the Angel’s Voice,” for example, and “Laura of the Violin.”

But of the hundreds of girls who lived at the Ospedale, only a few dozen at a time had the talent necessary to become members of the orchestra and chorus.

Vivaldi’s compositions for the school

Vivaldi became the most famous of all the renowned instructors of the Ospedale’s girls’ orchestra and chorus. He composed numerous cantatas, concertos, and sacred works specifically for his pupils to perform.

One stellar example: He created “Gloria in D Major,” one of the finest compositions in the entire repertoire of sacred music, for the group. The girls sang this piece while situated high up in the top-most galleries of the church, where they would be concealed from the curious stares of tourists and the rough-and-tumble public. The fact that they were afforded an additional layer of protection by a latticed grille only served to enhance the atmosphere of lyrical majesty and mystery of the Gloria in performance.

Vivaldi built the Gloria’s dozen small movements into a joyous praise song for God and God’s creation, with the music depicting moods from deep melancholy to bursts of happiness.

A deeply moving novel

In 2014 American author Kimberly Cross Teter published a young adult novel, Isabella’s Libretto, a work of historical fiction based on the girls’ orchestra at the Ospedale. Isabella, the novel’s protagonist, is an abandoned infant taken in by the orphanage. She grows to be a gifted young cellist with dreams of one day performing a work that she hoped Vivaldi would create especially for her.

But Isabella is also a free spirit and an annoyance to the Ospedale’s head nun, who sets out to tame her by requiring her to give cello lessons to a new pupil whose burned face testifies to her escape from the fire that killed her family. Isabella finds the grace within herself to rise to this challenge, even as the passing years school her in the bittersweet changes that adulthood brings. Her favorite teacher marries and leaves the orphanage, reminding Isabella that any girl who leaves is bound by the Pieta’s rules from ever performing music in public again.

And Isabella herself must weigh her love for her art with her growing preoccupation with thoughts of a young man who seems to want to pursue her. Her struggles with her decision about which future she wants for herself make for compelling reading and will draw in empathetic readers.

A resplendent picture book

Stephen Costanza’s 2012 jewel-toned picture book Vivaldi and the Invisible Orchestra mines the same fascinating ground to tell the story of the Ospedale for younger readers. In this treatment, orphan girl Candida becomes a transcriber of Vivaldi’s emerging works, creating sheet music for the use of the performers in the “Invisible Orchestra”—so called because the female players performed from places of concealment.

Candida’s value goes unappreciated, until the day a poem she composed finds its way into the sheet music, and her own creative gifts receive their due. In the author’s imagination, Candida’s sonnets provide Vivaldi with the inspiration he needs to produce his “Four Seasons,” perhaps his most famous and beloved work.

The Ospedale today

The Church of Santa Maria della Pietà still bears a nickname signifying it as “Vivaldi’s Church,” even though construction on its present building on the Riva degli Schiavoni was not finished until decades after his death. Today, the church stands adjacent to the Metropole Hotel, which was built up around a portion of the older Ospedale that had housed the music room.

The present church, constructed in the mid-18th century, recently underwent renovation after having fallen into disuse and disrepair and has reopened for concerts.

Today, the church’s social welfare outreach program is still in operation, serving its community with early education programs for young children and parents in crisis.

Additionally, a museum exhibiting some of the items associated with the centuries-old Ospedale is situated nearby.

How to Enrich Your Child’s Musical Experiences at Home

9/24/2019

Teaching the basics of music doesn’t always have to take place in school. While formal music education programs are vital for giving children an appreciation of music as one of the quintessential human activities—and are certainly needed when children hope to pursue a musical career—parents and families can provide numerous informal opportunities to develop their children’s musical gifts.

Music has an innate and immediate appeal to almost all children, so get creative and make it one of the focal points in your family life. The following suggestions, advocated by a variety of music teachers and family educators, can help point you in the right direction:

Turn “trash” into treasure.

Use ordinary items found around your home, office, or yard to produce interesting and captivating sounds.

For example, you can start an entire percussion section with a few kitchen and garden tools: Pots and pans, lids, watering cans, metal or wooden spoons, empty jugs, unbreakable bowls, water glasses, and other items can produce a wide variety of tones. Try banging the sturdier items together, or beat them with spoons or ladles to make an impromptu drum set.

Fill a series of glasses with different levels of water and gently strike them with a spoon. This latter activity is a wonderful chance to create your own STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) lesson, as you and your child see firsthand how the amount of water in a glass affects the speed at which sound waves travel and therefore the pitch of the resulting sound.

Other items that can produce a variety of sounds for your child’s enjoyment include that bubble wrap you were about to throw away, pens and pencils, or even crumpled-up newspaper or wrapping paper.

Get crafty.

Making his or her own musical instruments together with adults can add to the fun of a child’s musical education. In addition, reusing items that you would have thrown away can help your family gain a greater appreciation of the need for recycling and purposeful spending.

Numerous websites, put together by parents and teachers, offer lively selections of ideas and directions for making a rich array of simple instruments. An old box that may once have held tissue paper can be fitted with rubber bands to fashion a simple guitar. Plastic Easter eggs can be decorated and filled with dry rice, beans, or peas to become wonderful shaker instruments. A paper plate with jingle bells attached to it with string becomes a tambourine. And balloon skins stretched over the tops of a series of tin cans can become an exceptional set of drums.

After you create your own instruments, practice them together. See how many sounds you can coax them to produce, and even try writing and performing a musical composition using only the instruments you have made. Experiment together while emphasizing to your child that improvisation and exploration are more important than “perfection.”

Connect with real musical instruments.

If you can buy or borrow real musical instruments, bring them into your home whenever possible. Young children are likely to be especially tactile, so let them experience what a drum set, a clarinet, or a flute feels like in their hands. A visit to a local museum that has a music exhibit, or to a music store or university music department, can also provide this experience.

Investigate whether your community offers musical instrument lending libraries, which are designed to provide access to music education for all people, regardless of income. Such libraries are available in some locations in the United States, but residents of Canada are especially fortunate.

Toronto, for example, recently initiated a musical instrument lending program through its public library system. Library patrons can check out violins, guitars, drums, and other instruments, free of charge.

Listen together.

Bring live and recorded music from as many cultures and time periods as possible into your home. Practice your listening skills, and see if you and your child can recognize the sounds of the different instruments in a composition. Encourage your child to catch the beat by clapping, tapping a foot, or creating a dance in time with the music.

Hit the books.

Bring home a variety of music-themed books, including picture storybook classics like Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin, written by Lloyd Moss and illustrated by Marjorie Priceman; or The Philharmonic Gets Dressed by Karla Kuskin, with pictures by Marc Simont.

Older children will also find plenty of music-themed fiction in titles such as Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis and The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White.

Your local bookstore or public library will likely offer all of these, and many others, as well as informational books about music and biographies of great musicians.

Unite music and art.

You can also look for coloring books that feature images of musical instruments or music performances. Additionally, a simple internet search using the keywords “musical instruments” and “coloring pages” will yield many free images to download and print for your child to decorate. Creating visual representations of musical instruments and concepts will provide a multi-sensory experience that can deepen your child’s connection to the related art of music.

This Is How Musical Theater Got to the American Stage

9/24/2019

In 2017, about 40 million people in the United States attended at least one musical theater production, according to data published by Statista.com. This level of enthusiasm puts this timeless art form near the top of the charts among all types of live performing arts.

Here are only a few insights into the rich history of musical theater, as it developed in the ancient and early modern world, and as it evolved in the United States in particular:

Its roots go back to antiquity.

Musical theater as American audiences know it today traces its beginnings all the way back to antiquity. Most historians believe that it first developed in classical Greece in about 500 BCE.

At that time, performers in open-air amphitheaters began to weave dance and musical performances into comedy and drama performances. By the days of ancient Rome, it was commonplace to incorporate multi-instrumental music along with singing, dancing, and special visual entertainments, into stage shows.

Its medieval spiritual predecessors include minstrels and religious ceremonies.

The European Middle Ages saw the proliferation of strolling players who performed in musical productions. In England during the latter part of this era, for example, traveling minstrels performed musical pageants in torchlight procession.

Medieval churches were also important sites for the development of a format that would influence musical theater, with religious services often presented in this type of framework. During the Renaissance, masked performers performed comedies and dramas against backdrops painted to evoke various kinds of scenes.

It shares numerous elements with opera.

Perhaps the most direct line leading from past eras’ performing arts presentations to the contemporary musical was the development of opera during the early modern era. By the 18th century in Western Europe, opera had become a highly sophisticated way of telling a story via music, making use of orchestral music and individual and choral singers.

Even today, the classical operatic tradition shares numerous elements with musical theater: Both tell a story through song, both feature individualized characters, and both are comprised of a variety of songs, joined into a continuous narrative with non-musical lines, written to convey emotion or to move the story forward.

Its development is uniquely American.

The beginnings of musical theater performances in the United States began even before the American Revolution, with operas from the Old World often performed in the New. After the U.S. achieved independence, its own new types of musical theater traditions flourished. Burlesque, characterized by extravagant costumes, wild plots, and over-the-top satirical characters, became enormously popular.

American musical theater as we know it today grew up in the new nation alongside the Industrial Revolution. By the later years of the 19th century, ordinary urban life had been transformed.

The proliferation of railroad and streetcar travel, electric street lighting, improved sanitation, and higher-paying jobs for average people in factories and offices had a huge impact on country. People could now enjoy greater freedom and speed of movement as they navigated safer cities, and they had more disposable income to spend on entertainment.

Its official beginning could be considered the opening of The Black Crook.

In 1866, New York City was the site of the first performance of a modern-day musical, with the debut of The Black Crook. This production held audience members' interest for the more than five hours it took to perform it on stage.

The Black Crook was an action-packed musical concoction that made it to the stage only due to chance and the canny idea of one local entrepreneur who had a problem to solve. He had booked two separate productions, one featuring a silk stocking-clad ballet troupe from France, and the other a story whose well-used plot involved the theme of selling one’s soul to the devil.

A fire destroyed one of the two theaters, so the enterprising booker combined the two shows on one stage into a music-and-dance-filled melodrama. The Black Crook ran for close to 500 performances, and was recently revived on Broadway for its 150th anniversary.

Its modern character was cemented with “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

Composer, lyricist, librettist, and impresario George M. Cohan is often credited by theater historians as laying the foundation stone of the distinctively American musical theater in the early 1900s. In Cohan’s work, for the first time on any real scale, American audiences saw American stories depicting American values, traditions, and viewpoints.

Cohan’s formula for writing musical theater won popularity among his successors in the form. This simple rubric involved using any storyline, no matter how wild and improbable its plot or character motivations, as a means of leading into engaging musical and comedy numbers.

The extravagance of the early 20th century American musical was marked by large-scale, extravagant opening and closing numbers, featuring lines of chorus girls and other performers, singing and dancing together in often elaborately staged productions. Using this formula, writers and composers might fabricate an entire flimsily connected plotline simply as a means of showcasing the skills of popular individual performers.

Its defining characteristics have changed with the times.

Until the major cultural shifts that came with the Vietnam War and an era of questioning and protest, this American musical tradition thrived. Before the late 1960s changed public tastes, composers such as Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers, along with lyricists like Oscar Hammerstein II and Lorenz Hart, created musical comedies and dramas with richly evocative scores, clever lyrics, and the punch of personality that have made them beloved classics in both stage and film versions.

For parents interested in teaching their children more, the six-part PBS documentary entitled Broadway: The American Musical offers older children, teens, and adults a detailed and engaging history of the 20th century American musical theater. The series is available in DVD format through major retailers and as a separately published book.

How Music Paints Pictures - The Artistry of 4 Famous Tone Poems

9/17/2019

Whether tone poems are enjoyed in a concert hall or played in a simplified arrangement in school or at home, they offer young music students a rich variety of musical experiences.

A tone poem is a musical composition designed for a full orchestra. It is designed to evoke, through the choice of instrumentation, tempo, and arrangement, concrete images and storylines in the minds and hearts of listeners. The titles of many tone poems further help the listener in that they acknowledge a composition’s roots in a famous legend, poem, picture, place, or historical event.

A tone poem can conjure up visions of majestic mountains, forests, and waterways; knights on horseback gliding over desert sands; the appearance of magical beings, or the tender feelings between two lovers. And a favorite tone poem can make audiences feel transported, mentally and emotionally, to long-past heroic ages, or into the pages of beloved works of literature.

Hungarian composer Franz Liszt is often credited with inventing the form of the tone poem, also known as the symphonic poem, in the mid-19th century. In this era of romanticism, revolution, and rising national consciousness, the form flourished.

By the early 20th century, composers such as Igor Stravinsky were still writing richly orchestrated tone poems. However, the form began to shift toward using this type of colorful music as a background for dance performances, rather than as single-unit orchestral pieces.

Here are brief summaries of what makes only a few of the best-known tone poems memorable:

1. The Moldau

Czech composer Bedřich Smetana completed “The Moldau” after only 19 days of work in 1874. Since then, its central melody has become an iconic national symbol. The piece is one part of a six-section suite titled My Country, in which the deeply patriotic composer depicted the natural beauty and the rich cycle of history and myth of his native land.

“Moldau” is the German name for the Vltava River, which flows from high forested mountains through the country lowlands and straight through the center of Prague. Smetana’s piece is by turns mystical, forceful, lively, and majestic, as it conjures up, first, the river’s quiet patter, then its sweep through a folksong-filled plain, to its destination near the capital, the royal seat of the Bohemian kings.

2. Scheherazade

Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov debuted his orchestral suite Scheherazade in 1888, offering audiences a collection of musical trips to the stories of the Arabian Nights.

The deep, bold opening notes paint a powerful picture of Sultan Shahryar, and the sinuous lilt of the violin portrays his wife, the storyteller Scheherazade, with the later musical themes unfolding the stories she tells like the unrolling of a magic carpet.

The four movements of the suite tell the story of Sinbad and his ship on the ocean; the “Tale of the Kalendar Prince,” bringing out the full capacity of the woodwinds to evoke an air of mystery; the tender and richly soulful romance of the story of a young prince and princess; and a finale that brings in themes from each of the previous sections, culminating in vivid images of a festival and the destruction of a ship on a wild, tempestuous sea.

3. Finlandia

In 1899, Finnish composer Jean Sibelius composed and premiered his now world-famous tone poem “Finlandia” as part of a larger suite. Like Smetana, Sibelius was a patriot who used his music to challenge the rule of an empire over his small country. “Finlandia” was, in fact, originally written to be performed at an event protesting the Russian tsar’s censorship of the Finnish press.

The work begins with the boom of timpani and brass to establish a somber and foreboding setting. As woodwinds and strings enter the musical conversation, they help to weave the type of stately atmosphere found in a king’s great hall. After a burst of forceful sound bringing in the sense of the whirlwind of struggle animating the Finnish people, the mood lifts. The piece concludes on drawn-out notes evoking a deep sense of serenity and majesty, as if listeners were looking down on sweeping vistas of dark-green Finnish forests.

Soon after its composition, the central theme of “Finlandia” became popular worldwide, with many American communities using the melody for songs honoring cities, schools, and other organizations.

4. Fantasia

Walt Disney’s 1940 full-length orchestral cartoon movie masterpiece Fantasia is a contemporary tone poem in itself. The film incorporates Disney’s retellings and re-imaginings of the stories behind several of the best-known symphonic works, including French composer Paul Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. In Disney’s version, Mickey Mouse is the hapless student of magic pursued by a pack of enchanted brooms.

Dukas’ original soundtrack debuted in 1897. He based it on a folkloric tale by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, one of the towering figures in the European literature of the Enlightenment. Dukas’ composition closely follows the sequence and spirit of Goethe’s piece by offering an opening that paints a picture of quiet, but magic-filled domesticity in the sorcerer’s workshop.

But then the apprentice enters, represented by a leitmotif uniting oboe, flute, clarinet, and harp. A burst of timpani perhaps signals a stroke of enchantment. Then, through the composer’s use of a triple-time march, the sorcerer’s army of brooms comes lumbering, and then sprinting, to vivid life, carrying one bucket of water after another.

Dukas masterfully uses strings to conjure up the flooding cascade of water that ensues before the sorcerer, accompanied by the gloomy moans of the bassoon, returns to chase away all the mischief.

4 Classic Movie Musicals to Delight Families

8/21/2019

A movie musical night can be one of the most enjoyable ways for families who love music to spend time together. Particularly when a child in the house takes voice or movement lessons, or plays an instrument, musicals can open up new doors for musical understanding and creativity. Whether you rent, buy, or stream them, these old-fashioned classic musicals offer great lyrics and danceable tunes, as well as engaging storylines that are suitable for all ages.

1. The Sound of Music

Richard Rodgers’ and Oscar Hammerstein II’s The Sound of Music (1965), starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, will likely top the list of favorite movie musicals for many families. One of the most recognizable and beloved of the great movie musicals, it tells the story of Maria, a young novitiate in a convent who starts work as a governess for a widower and his large family, only to fall in love.

Set in Austria at the time of the Nazi invasion that led into World War II, the plot offers a clear contrast between good and evil as the von Trapps struggle to remain true to their values and stage a perilous escape. The musical is based on the real-life experiences of Maria von Trapp, as told in her 1949 book The Story of the Trapp Family Singers.

The many well-known songs from the musical include “Do-Re-Mi,” (“Do, a deer, a female deer…”). In addition to being one of the liveliest and easiest musical numbers for a young child to learn, the song is a great way to teach solfege, the art of training the ear to distinguish musical tones.

Other wonderful pieces on the soundtrack include the poignant coming-of-age love song “Sixteen Going on Seventeen,” the raucously funny “The Lonely Goatherd,” and the poignant “Edelweiss,” a folk song that the von Trapps use to express their love of their homeland and their sorrow at leaving it.

2. The Wizard of Oz

The Wizard of Oz (1939), based on the series of children’s novels by L. Frank Baum, is another widely beloved family classic, with a score by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E. Y. “Yip” Harburg.

Dorothy, who was whisked away from her home in Kansas by a tornado, finds herself in the magical Land of Oz. She makes friends with the Tin Woodsman, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion, and together they make their way down the Yellow Brick Road to find the wizard who can give each of them their heart’s desire; and in the case of Dorothy, a return to her home.

The Wicked Witch of the West does her best to thwart them, sending an army of flying monkeys to attack in a harrowing scene. However, after Dorothy and her friends defeat her, they reach the Emerald City and unmask the great wizard as a bumbling, ordinary man, with goodness triumphing over both the wizard’s cowardly bombast and the witch’s evil.

The now-iconic songs that Arlen and Harburg composed for the film include the sweeping ballad “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” which became not only the centerpiece of the movie, with its theme of love and longing, but a lifelong theme song for star Judy Garland.

3. Singin’ in the Rain

Singin’ in the Rain (1952), starring the phenomenal dancer and singer Gene Kelly, alongside comic master Donald O’Connor and the multitalented Debbie Reynolds, offers a warm-hearted story, memorable protagonists, and plenty of exuberant songs that have captivated generations. As the late movie critic Roger Ebert wrote, there are few rivals for Singin’ in the Rain as a viewing and listening experience of pure fun.

The musical is set in Hollywood in the late 1920s, when silent films were being outclassed by the new “talkies,” leaving numerous former stars literally speechless when their real voices couldn’t match their onscreen images.

Kelly plays a matinee idol who dislikes his co-star and falls in love instead with the ingenue played by Reynolds. Arthur Freed’s lyrics and Nacio Herb Brown’s music enhance the charm of the book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. The film also offers O’Connor’s bouncy, show-stopping rendition of “Make ‘Em Laugh,” a lively trio performance by the three leads in “Good Mornin’,” and the kinetic magic of Kelly in the title number, sloshing, dancing, and singing his way against the shadows of a dark and rainy street.

4. The Music Man

The lively sound of “76 Trombones” is only one of the highlights in The Music Man (1962), created by Meredith Willson for the stage and later for the screen.

Robert Preston plays the title character, a traveling salesman—more aptly, a charming con man—named Harold Hill. In the sleepy days of 1912, right before the town’s Independence Day celebrations, Hill descends on River City to persuade residents that only he and the new marching band he is forming can—at the town’s expense—save them from modern corruption, such as a newly installed pool table.

“Ya Got Trouble,” Preston sings in one memorable song in his portrayal of Hill, as he tries to scare and con the town. “Right here in River City....With a capital ‘T,’ and that rhymes with ‘P’ and that stands for pool!”

Hill mesmerizes everyone in the town, with the sole exception being young “Marian the Librarian,” portrayed by Shirley Jones. As the holiday nears, the completely unmusical Hill is about to be discovered. But before he can take his ill-gotten receipts and flee the town, he realizes that he’s fallen in love with Marian. He also suddenly finds it in himself to actually do the thing he only pretended to be able to do—lead a band—and he and the town are saved.

Any family hoping to introduce their children to the wonders of onscreen musical theater will find much to enjoy in these four classics and in the many more made during this same era of the great movie musicals.

6 Notes on the Rich Variety of Musical Scales

8/8/2019

When children or adults learn music theory, one of the basic concepts they have to master is musical scales. A scale, simply put, consists of a graduated and organized set of tones that span and divide up an octave. By selecting a specific series of notes, as well as the intervals between them, a composer is setting up a pattern that he or she will use to express a full range of thought and emotion.

Scales are at the core of musical keys. If, for example, a piano teacher refers to Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” No. 14 in the key of C-sharp minor, the student will immediately understand that this particular classic work is built on the C-sharp minor scale.

Check out the following list of interesting facts for more about the history of musical scales.

Just how many scales are there?

There are actually hundreds of musical scales that people around the world have used at one time or another. Musicologists, in fact, point out that—theoretically speaking— there is an almost infinite number of scales that can be formulated.

Historians of music observe that the scales that develop within individual cultures tend to provide a glimpse into those cultures, with the most basic and straightforward scales associated with early or pre-literate societies, and the more sophisticated scales working their way through later and more complex societies.

Doing the math

As an example of the possibilities of building scales, we can consider the fact that there are 12 major scales in the Western musical tradition, each built on one of the 12 distinct pitches in an octave.

But there are also 24 minor scales—12 melodic and 12 harmonic—and a further 72 additional modes, which are simply scales that start out on different pitches. The Dorian mode of the ancient world is one of these—it begins on the note of D and includes, as the C-major scale does, no sharps or flats. Ancient musicians similarly built the Phrygian mode on the note of E. In total, there are seven modes that can be made based on the seven notes in an octave.

Additionally, there are chromatic, diminished, blues, and other distinctive types of scales that have emerged over time and in a variety of cultures.

How scales are built

The common denominator is that nearly every known musical scale is built on the strengths of between six and eight individual notes (five to seven intervals). And the tones included in each scale typically also all display a frequency ratio connection to the very first tone of that scale. Students of guitar and piano will find that they can adapt most of the world’s known scales to be played on their versatile instruments.

With this wide-open ground for the development of scales, musicians in the traditions most familiar to Western audiences have developed and popularized only a relative handful.

An ancient example that still rings true

Scholars believe that the pentatonic scale is among the oldest in the world. Based on five intervals dividing six notes, it can be found today incorporated in much of the music of the world. In its common anhemitonic form (meaning it contains no semitones), it consists of notes in the major scale at positions 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 8.

In the key of C-major, this would include the notes C, D, E, G, A, and back to C. This absence of half-steps gives the pentatonic scale a harmonious, immediately pleasing sound. Some of the music in the tradition of medieval Gregorian chant is based on the pentatonic scale.

A distinctively American scale

The blues scale is, arguably, the one on which much of today’s popular music is based. Anchored in African-American popular music of the Southern United States in the 19th century, the blues scale began with the human voice, as everyday people composed working songs, folk songs, and more.

The blues scale is musically complex. Some experts believe it is based on six notes, while others say seven. Some even count as many as nine notes on the blues scale.

In general, however, music theorists believe that the blues scale is a different version of the traditional minor and major pentatonic scales. One way to turn a regular scale into a blues scale is by adding “blue” notes—commonly a flat fifth-degree on the scale that lies next to the natural fifth on that scale. For example, a blues scale built on a minor pentatonic scale might include the following note sequence: A, C, D, E-flat, E, G, A.

Great blues singers like Robert Johnson and Ma Rainey made this form familiar to listeners through early 20th-century recordings of their performances.

A rainbow of musical color

The word “chromatic,” derived from the Greek word chroma (color) immediately gives a clue to the sounds of the chromatic scale. The chromatic scale employs all 12 notes in the Western musical tradition, and proceeds from one semitone to the next, leaving out none of the half-tones in its climb up the sequential ladder. Thus, in the chromatic scale built on the note of C, the sequence would be C, C-sharp, D, D-sharp, E, F, F-sharp, G, G-sharp, A, A-sharp, B.

Many composers have used chromaticism to bring color to passages of larger works built on more traditional scales. This scale is particularly associated with the atonal and experimental music that came to prominence in the 20th century.

Composer Arnold Schoenberg achieved renown as the originator of the serial 12-tone row, based on the chromatic scale. This key-less method requires a piece of music to deploy all 12 tones in the scale equally often, and it achieves this goal by a systematic ordering of the 12 tones.

A Look at 6 Lesser-Known Instruments of the Percussion Family

7/24/2019

For many young children, the percussion instruments are the most fun to play and learn. Striking, shaking, or clanging these instruments produces an immediate response that the child can hear or sometimes even see. This easily grasped one-to-one correspondence between the child’s actions and the instrument’s sound is a big part of the appeal.

Playing a percussion instrument is also valuable because it helps people of all ages improve their physical coordination, dexterity, and motor skills. In addition, percussion instruments give music students the chance to let loose creatively in ways that few other instrument types can equal. Researchers have even learned that drumming and practicing other percussion instruments can reduce stress and even improve the immune system.

For all these reasons and more, percussion instruments are justifiably popular with student musicians, professionals, and audiences around the world.

The following is a closer look at a few members of this truly global family of musical instruments. This list focuses on some of the more seldom-discussed instruments in the percussion family, and thus omits the piano and the many types of acoustic and electronic drums that are popular in the U.S.

The boom of the timpani

In Sergei Prokofiev’s classic Peter and the Wolf, an imaginative musical romp through the instruments of the orchestra, the crash of the timpani announces the arrival of the hunters.

Timpani, also known as kettledrums, entered the Western musical world during the Middle Ages, imported by returning Crusaders and Arabic warriors arriving in western and southern European ports. Timpani came to be used in connection with trumpets to herald the arrival of aristocratic cavalry troops onto a battlefield.

Timpani consist of large, round, copper-bodied drums shaped like half of a sphere. Their drumheads consist of sheets of plastic or calfskin stretched tight across the opening. A player produces sound by striking the instruments with sticks or mallets made of wood or tipped in felt.

Timpani can be tuned to produce a variety of pitches when their drumheads are loosened or tightened via an attached foot pedal. In a typical orchestra, a single musician will play four or more timpani in a range of sizes and pitches. Playing the timpani calls on all the performer’s skills of attention and sense of pitch, since a typical orchestral piece calls for multiple tuning changes.

The xylophone’s flexible range

The xylophone’s early history lies in Asia, most scholars believe, before it spread to Africa and then to Europe. The instrument’s name derives from an ancient Greek word that refers to its wood-like tones.

The common denominator among the many types of xylophones available today is that the typical xylophone consists of a set of keys, or bars, organized in octaves, like piano keys. Affixed beneath the keys are a series of resonators, or metallic tubes, which produce the sound. Xylophones can be simple toys for the youngest children or sophisticated, multi-octave orchestral instruments.

The xylophone player strikes the keys with a mallet. Mallets are produced in varying degrees of softness or hardness; changing the pitch of the xylophone involves using a different type of mallet or changing the way one strikes the keys.

The xylophone’s close relatives in the percussion family include the larger and more mellow-toned marimba, the smaller and jingly-voiced glockenspiel, and the vibraphone.

The Jazz Age vibraphone

Invented in the 1920s, the vibraphone is distinguished by its metal keys and resonators and by the addition of little spinning discs, or fans, in its interior. These small discs are electrically powered and are arranged under the keys and over the resonators.

A player uses felted or wool-tufted mallets to strike the keys. He or she tunes the vibraphone by means of a motor that turns a rod connected to the discs. The resulting sound is the type of shifting, sliding pitch that’s referred to as vibrato when produced by the human voice.

The vibraphone has found extensive use in the popular jazz repertoire of artists such as Lionel Hampton. The instrument’s first appearance in an orchestra was in the 1937 Alban Berg opera Lulu.

The cymbals – the orchestra’s alarm clock

The crashing of the cymbals in the orchestra makes everyone take notice. A set of these ultra-loud percussion instruments consists of a pair of large discs, ranging in size from 16 to 22 inches in diameter. These discs are typically fashioned of spun bronze.

A player hits the cymbals together, or in the case of suspended cymbals, strikes them with a mallet. In general, larger cymbals produce lower sounds.

The waterphone’s New Age appeal

The waterphone is a newer innovation in percussion. Patented in the 1970s and based on a Tibetan water drum and other instruments, the waterphone consists of a bowl of water, a resonator, and a series of differently sized metal rods. A player uses a mallet, bow, or his or her own fingers to produce sound by striking the rods.

The vibration causes the water to shift in the bowl, thus altering the shape of the resonance chamber and creating a whole range of gliding sounds and echoes. Musicologists have described the waterphone’s sound as mysterious and otherworldly, and the instrument is noticeable in many television and film soundtracks.

The triangle’s thousand-year-old lilt

The triangle is a simple steel bar bent into the shape of an equilateral triangle, with part of one corner left open. The player strikes the instrument with a simple steel rod.

In use at least since the Middle Ages, the triangle often featured an attached set of jingly rings until the early 19th century. As European audiences of the 1700s demanded music in the Turkish style, Western musicians paired the triangle, the cymbals, and the bass drum into an ensemble with the aim of replicating the popular Turkish Janissary sound.

The triangle’s piercing pitch is audible even over the sounds of a full orchestra. Accordingly, classical composers tend to use the triangle sparingly, often to add punctuation to a composition.

<<Previous

Forward>>

Don Gayhardt's Blog