[f_minor] OT: Intro to Classical Music for a young lad ?

[Pat]

Dear all

I would like to thank you all for all the suggestions you sent in.

I will definetly study Orff’s Schulwerk and see what I can find. The idea sounds most interesting. I will also try to watch Fantasia with Godson the next time I see him. If you are not aware of this movie please do watch it. Stoikowski conducts Bach, Beethoven and Strawinksy (gasp ! I hear you say, but it works ! Plus, kids like dinosaurs, so why not?) amongst others and the visual stimulant is absolutey mindblowing stuff, especially the Nurcracker with the woodelfs. I must admit I had not seen this movie before but it was worth every minute.

I shall also look into all the other suggestions you kindly sent in. Lenny doing his shtick might be interesting, I just hope he is not too blase for a 10 year old. But if his style of delivery is getting popular again then why not ?

I also wonder about that thing with the Magic Flute done with marionettes is worth it. Just playing the music “as is” without telling him what it is might work then. The idea sound most interesting, Mozart and Marionettes. Hm.

For the moment Godson will get the new children’s book by Dawkins (because scientific knowledge is also important !) and in terms of classical music Peter and the Wolf (narrated in german by Loriot and english by David Bowie).
He will also get the WTC 1 played by GG because someone suggested that this would quite easy, I have also added the Two and Three Part Inventions because they are short. Tracks from the Klavierbüchlein would have also been sweet but I dunno any good recordings, shame on me. At least I know GG never recorded the full thing. You can never have too much Bach in any case.

And if he likes that stuff I already have a few ideas and suggestions for his birthday.

Again, thank you all for helping me out on that one and the best of the season for you and yours.

OT closed
Pat

From: Anita Monroe 
Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2011 6:22 PM
To: Discussion of the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. 
Subject: Re: [f_minor] OT: Intro to Classical Music for a young lad ?

Tim,  This has triggered memories.  One thing my students did can make me laugh remembering it.  When listening to the 1812 Overture, they threw papers balls every time the cannon boomed.  I'm sure all of them remember that music.   

Anita  (-:


On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 2:04 AM, Timothy Conway <timcon at comswest.net.au> wrote:

  Anita Monroe wrote:

    Hi Pat,  I introduced hundreds of students to classical music.  I didn't tell them what it was, just played it and sometimes had them figure out "the beat".  They loved Beethoven's 5th.  It has great rhythm.  The second movement can make anyone sway,even sitting at a desk.  I would just sit with the kid, listen to good stuff and beat the rhythm, maybe with a little drum.

  I agree. That's how we all learned at school in England when I was 11. Our music teacher, who could play just about every instrument in the orchestra and had a good voice, used to play us Morning and From the Hall of the Mountain King (Greig) on 78s and a wind-up gramophone. He also had that Rachmaninov prelude where the bloke is supposedly lying in his coffin hoping to be released, Ravel's Bolero, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, bouncy bits of Handel and LvB, ditto Boccherini and whatever else he could find that we would like. One record a week was a fun record, like The Runaway Train Went Over The Hill, or Danny Kaye's Tubby the Tuba or Der Liddle Fiddle. If there was anything we didn't like, he never played it again. Only when we were 15 or more did he introduce us to serious stuff, and at that stage the LP had arrived and we were no longer confined to shorter pieces.

  And after more than 50 years I can still remember a lot of the pieces he played us (those I mentioned and The New World Symphony second movement, Schubert's Unfinished, Eine Kleine Nachtmusic, Rossini overtures, thrilling bits of Verdi especially La Donna e Mobile, and so on) -- all potboilers but just what we weedy almost-teens needed to interest us in proper music. Mind you -- times were different then because there was little TV and radio and not every house had a gramophone. The Internet was decades away. So I suppose we would have lapped up anything. But although times change, kids don't.

  HTH.


  -- Tim Conway
  Geraldton, Western Australia






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