The Colorado Adventure

Wiggy

Today after our library volunteer/story time/reading extravaganza we headed to another library to set up for my Beethoven’s wig co-op. If you haven’t heard the songs, you need to go grab a volume. They are funny and I promise after you hear the lyrics you will never listen to that piece of music the same way again. You can listen to the songs here. At the co-op I planned to read a bio or story of the composer, then listen to the original score twice and then hear the lyric version twice. While we listened we were supposed to draw what we thought the music was saying. Apparently most of the music made Hannah feel like a round person under a rainbow.

We folded our paper in halves so we could see the difference between the regular music and the funny version and it was different. Almost everyone drew fireworks for both versions of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture (except for 1 person who drew a bull and bull fighter.) Other than that one, the kids’ drawings of what they heard were as varied as the instruments that played what we heard.

First up, Beethoven. We heard the 5th symphony and Fur Elise. Beethoven went deaf after creating a few symphonies and some sonatas. By the time he wrote his 5th symphony he was almost entirely deaf. (5th symphony picture before lyrics)

(After lyrics, Beethoven’s big wig, with its own address.)

He became frustrated and began composing this symphony while staying in the countryside and walking in thunderstorms. Listen close and you can hear the thunder crashing around, life’s storms advancing and him standing firm in the face of challenges.

For awhile he became depressed and quite caring about his appearance, letting his hair grow wild and not changing his clothes. He thought about giving up and then took the words of a poem that his friend Friedrich Schiller wrote (Ode to Joy) and painstakingly wrote out his 9th symphony (the chorus has Schiller’s poem in it.) Out of tremendous loss Beethoven gave us beautiful music to reflect on.

I didn’t have much information on Franz Liszt or Delibes so we had to go to Wikipedia for them. Franz Liszt from 1859 to 1865 was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist and teacher.

He was also the father-in-law of Richard Wagner. Liszt became renowned throughout Europe during the 19th century for his great skill as a performer. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age and perhaps the greatest pianist of all time. He was also an important and influential composer, a notable piano teacher, a conductor who contributed significantly to the modern development of the art, and a benefactor to other composers and performers.

Léo Delibes was born in Saint-Germain-du-Val, France, in 1836. His father was a mailman, but his mother was a talented amateur musician and his grandfather was an opera singer. He was raised mainly by his mother and uncle following his father’s early death. Starting in 1847, Delibes studied composition at the Paris Conservatoire as a student of Adolphe Adam. A year later, he also began taking voice lessons, though he would end up a much better organ player than singer.

Delibes’ work is known to have been a great influence on composers such as Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saëns and Debussy. His ballet Sylvia was of special interest to Tchaikovsky. Here is a picture of the lyrical version of the song (where water is dripping everywhere, Sylvia!)

Sebastian Bach was born into a musical family. For 4 generations before and 2 after him music was at the heart of family. He was introduced at a young age to the violin and clavichord. At age 15 he walked 200 miles to his boarding school where he learned to play the organ. He walked to towns far away to listen to pieces played on church organs and then one day it was his own music that he played in church. He heard melodies in his head and wrote them down, 1 for the violin, 1 for the trumpet, 1 for the flute until all of the instrument voices sounded as if good friends were talking. Once he was thrown in jail for a month (because he tried to change jobs), he spent the time well though, coming out with 46 more pieces of music! He got married and had 20 children, taught music and Latin to schoolboys and composed music for the 5 hour church service every Sunday. He composed music until the day that he died and ended up with over 1,000 works of music that he had written.

Franz Joseph Haydn was the father of the symphony. He wrote more than 100 of these long musical pieces (compared to Beethoven who wrote only 9 symphonies.) When he was young he often pretended to play the violin by holding a stick to his chin and rubbing it with another one. He sang in the Vienna boys choir for 9 years. He landed a sweet job as the music director at Eisenstadt castle playing for a prince. Later he went to London and played in a friendly musical competition where composers took turns writing symphonies trying to compose one better than the other guy. Haydn wrote his Symphony No. 94 in G major (Surprise symphony) and won.

It definitely kept people from falling asleep!

Robert Schumann was the first composer to write music specifically for children. He had 8 children of his own and they were probably the inspiration for that. Robert had music that filled his head, but he couldn’t get it out into notes. When he tried to bang them out on the piano, they just didn’t sound right. His mother worried that if he became a musician he’d be poor and hungry, but his father said that being a musician would make young Robert happy and that’s all that mattered. Robert began taking organ lessons and debuted on stage. Everyone loved him and he started writing pieces for a small orchestra. Eventually he hurt his hand and could no longer play the piano but he married a famous lady pianist and she would play his musical creations while their 8 children danced around the room.

Peter Tchaikovsky was born in Russia to a pianist mother and engineer father. He learned to play the piano at a young age, but when he got older he went into law to please his father. Fortunately for us, music had a hold on him and he returned to his first love. He loved to go to the ballet and whenever he composed music for a ballet (think Swan Lake) he thought of girls twirling around the stage. He taught at a school where he could keep studying, reading and writing music. He traveled to America and played at the newly opened Carnegie hall in New York City.

In 1892, one year before his death, he completed the Nutcracker symphony; music which we have come to revel in at Christmas.

Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart was only 3 when he started playing the piano. At age 6 he was composing symphonies! After a whirlwind young life of playing before kings and queens, traveling around to famous places and being the center of attention Mozart suddenly was displaced. Maybe because he was 17, too old to be a child prodigy, too young to be a person of importance. (Picture of Eine Kleine Nacht Musik)

So, he ended up in Salzburg working for the prince-arch bishop (which sounds like a great job, but the prince treated all his musicians as servants.) Then a reprieve, he was asked to write an opera for the Munich theater – a tremendous honor. Later he went to live in Vienna and worked at composing and giving performances. Most people didn’t want old music, so he had to write a new performance for each patron. He married and 2 of his 6 children survived. He started working with an Italian librettist on 3 operas: The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutte. Right before his death he worked on Requiem and when he died at age 35 he left behind over 600 musical works.

Well, that was our tour today, check out Classics for kids for more composer bios and go grab a copy of Beethoven’s wig (vol. 1,2,3 or 4) and sing along.

Some books I used:

Mozart the wonder child by Diane Stanley
Schumann by Ann Rachlin
Haydn by Eric Summerer
Sebastian a book about Bach by Jeanette Winter
Tchaikovsky by Greta Cencetti
Beethoven great composer by Anna Miller