Composer of the Month - LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

Beethoven was a German composer. He was born in 1770 and died in 1827. He was a crucial figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western classical music, and remains one of the most acclaimed and influential composers of all time.

Beethoven was a prolific composer and wrote music for many different instruments and ensembles.

Did you know that Beethoven suffered from deafness, but still continued to write music and to conduct his pieces.

Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata (first movement) solo piano

Für Elise (Bagatelle in A minor)

Symphony Number 5 in C Minor, Opus 67 (Ist movement)

Practive your Saxophone with Giant Steps

This is what John Coltrane's landmark tune and solo look like when they come to life on paper.

Back to back Bach?

Are you interested in Bach? Watch this:


"In the enigmatic Canon 1 a 2 from J. S. Bach’s “Musical Offering” (1747) (also known as “crab canon” or “canon cancrizans”), the manuscript shows a single score, whose beginning joins with the end. This space is topologically equivalent to a bundle of the line segment over the circle, known as a Möbius strip. The simultaneous performance of the deeply related forward and backward paths gives appearance to two voices, whose symmetry determines a reversible evolution. A musical universe is built and then is “unplayed” back into silence." (link)

Thanks to Dan Coleman at Open Culture for helping us find this.

Graphical Score Animations

Using his Music Animation Machine, Stephen Malinowski has created some intriguing looks at music.

The video below shows an animated score of Beethoven’s 5th, and you can use this chart that explains what the colors in the score mean. Essentially each color represents a particular instrument. Get the chart here,



and Debussy's Claire de la Lune:



Here is the playlist for music by Bach:



Go to the YouTube page (with links to all 63 videos of all kinds of music): http://www.youtube.com/user/smalin and the Musical Animation Machine's web page is here: http://www.musanim.com/. You can read an interview with Stephen Malinowski here.

photo of Stephen Anthony Malinowski from Wikipedia

One Bag of Rice. Playscript

Year 5 students. Here are the details for your Performing Arts Assessment.

• You have 3 weeks to prepare for your performance.

• Performances will be in the week week beginning 11th October

LEARNING YOUR PART: Please have a look at the script and learn your part. Scripts will not be allowed for the final performance.

PROPS: Check that your group has the following props (small tin can drum, rucksack, bag of rice, pot, sheets, or something for the washerwoman to wash, coat)

SET: You may wish to build a set. Think carefully about how you will do this. You may use some of the boxes and card in the PA room, or you may wish to do this at home and to bring it into school.

COSTUMES: Please bring in costumes for your character.

REMEMBER - YOU WILL NEED TO BE READY TO PERFORM IN 3 WEEKS TIME.

GOOD LUCK!



(Click on the picture of each page to open it full size)

COMPOSER OF THE MONTH: ARTHUR HONEGGER

Arthur Honegger (1892 – 1955) was a Swiss composer who was born in France and lived for most of his life in Paris. His most frequently performed work is called Pacific 231, which creates the sounds of a steam locomotive through music. He wrote this piece in 1923. It is written for an orchestra to perform.



You can read more about Arthur Honegger at Artist in Residence.

The Dutch Philharmonic Orchestra

On the The Dutch Philharmonic Orchestra's web page, you can see and hear about the works they are performing. In this video, conductor Wayne Marshall talks about "L'enfant et les sortileges", describing (in English) how the singers and instrumentalists of the orchestra imitate the characters from the tale and bring a child's fantasies to life trhough Ravel's music. Hay Beurskens (in Dutch) gives guided tour gives along the different instruments and demonstrates the wind machine.…

Click on the arrow to start the video.

The Dutch Philharmonic Orchestra plays L'enfant et les sortileges by Maurice Ravel.

In the column on the right side of the web page, you'll find links to other short videos which talk about works performed by the orchestra: Brahms, Dvorak, Frank, Gershwin, Glinka, Hayden, Khachaturian, Mahler, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Schmidt, Schubert, Schumann, Shostakovitch, Scriabin, and Johann Strauss. All the videos include some English and some Dutch dialogue.

(You can use http://babelfish.yahoo.com to translate the text of the web page.)