Magical Creatures in Music

The title of this entry is the premise of the outreach performance I did on Monday. My fellow students and I visited a fifth grade music classroom. We each had 30 minutes to present to the kids -- a different class for each of us.

The first person, K, gave a great interactive performance with her violin. She did a song called "Rye Whiskey" (although she didn't tell the kids the title), and she asked the students to make a movie to go with the song. First, she played the entire piece, accompanied by the piano. Then, she pulled up a PowerPoint presentation with different pictures and asked the kids to vote on the time period, the location, and the set for the "movie". They picked the 1850s Wild West with a farm family. Next, she had them listen to each section of the piece again and then volunteer suggestions for what each spot might paint visually. One kid kept insisting, "And then, there's a pile of mud, and the guy comes in and he slips and falls on his face." "And then, there's a bucket of mud, and the guy comes in and he slips and falls on his face." The other recurring theme was offered by a boy: "Somebody's drinking milk, and he starts to laugh and it comes out his nose." "Somebody's drinking orange soda, and he starts to laugh and it comes out his nose." The overall story ended up being a party where people are dancing and then start to leave, perhaps as the children fall asleep. Very fun. K did a fantastic job at keeping them engaged and excited about it.

A was up next. He sang three pieces by Faure in a group, but he didn't tell them the meaning. Then, the students broke into three groups and drew three pictures with markers showing the story. Each group took one piece. A went around to each group to answer questions. Then, he displayed the pictures and sang the song cycle again. The first piece turned out to depict a man who is lonely but notices a woman and thinks that his loneliness might be over. The picture was of a grassy hill, a man lying on the hill and dreaming and singing, and a woman at the base of the hill about to climb up. Very vivid.

The second piece A. sang was about the man losing this woman. A. had sung the piece in a very angry tone, and the kids picked up on it. They drew a large face, very outsized for the body that accompanied it, and giant black raindrops falling all around the angered face. The cheeks were red, "like yours were when you sang," they said, and there was blood on the brow. Amazing.

The third piece was about the final break up of the lovers. This picture was a bit more "comic strip like", as my professor described it this morning. Two people with cartoon bubbles above their heads faced each other. The woman's bubble said something like "Goodbye forever", while the man's bubble said "I don't want to break up."

My favorite bit in A.'s presentation was when one kid raised his hand with what we all thought might be a tangential question. Instead, he said, "I just have to compliment the pianist." So thoughtful and sensitive. As adults and even as musicians, it's all too easy to focus on the soloist and ignore the accompanist. But it really should be a partnership, an equal performance. What a wonderful kudos from this dear student. We all gave H.J., the accompanist, a round of applause.

A.'s presentation ran a few minutes over, so I tried to do some quick thinking about what I could cut in mine. I figured I might be short on time, so I'd deliberately designed it to be about 20 minutes long, figuring I could expand it by letting the kids ask me questions at the end about music school or whatever they wanted.

My piece was Debussy's "La Romance d'Ariel," based on Ariel's longing for Miranda in Shakespeare's The Tempest. I started off asking if any of the kids had ever heard of William Shakespeare, and the whole class raised their hands. One told me that he was a poet and a writer. Then, when I asked them if they knew any of his plays, they enthusiastically rattled off, "Romeo and Juliet!" "Hamlet!" and "Macbeth!" I was so impressed. Then, I told them about The Tempest and the basic idea - that Ariel loves Miranda but she falls in love with another and leaves the island where Ariel lives.

"How do you think Ariel felt?" I asked.

"Disappointed." "Angry."

"Yes, you're right, and maybe sad and hurt, too. Do you do anything when you're feeling sad and hurt or angry? I talk to my friends or my mom and dad, and sometimes I sing. Did you know that singing is a great way to express emotions? Songs can be happy or sad. What kind of song do you think Ariel would sing?"

"A sad one."

"Great! What about before he knows that Miranda has left him, when he thinks she might be coming back?"

"A happy one."

"Right, and maybe a hopeful one, too! Well, two people wrote a song that they imagined Ariel might sing."

We talked briefly about Debussy and Paul Bourget, the poet. Then I told them that I would wave my hands and they would all have Magical Composer Powers.

"One, two, three, Abracadabra! You all have magic composer powers now! So together, we're going to try to discover how Debussy might have written the music for this song."

I went through various bits of the piece, asking them to picture some things in nature that might be in the song since Ariel is a sprite who lives in the woods. They came up with nearly all the elements Bourget included.

We also talked about how flower petals look when they fall, and I had them use their hands to show me. Then, I asked them to sing how they thought flower petals might sound when they fell. One girl gave me a descending chromatic scale - excellent! Another gave me a more loop-d-loop melody. I sang Debussy's bit, which happens to use duple and triple meter alternating to give that jerky descent that flower petals take on the wind currents. They liked the high part (it goes up to a high D flat -- 3 above middle C).

We next talked about the words Gaiment ou Douloureusement -- essentially translated as "happily or sadly." They learned the French, and one kid spontaneously said, "J'y douloureusement."

"Ah! I see we have someone who knows French! That's great! Je suis douloureusement!" (Actually, douloureusement is an adverb. I think the phrase would be "Je suis douloureuse/douloureux", but I didn't think of that at the time. Might have confused them if I did. Anyway, great initiative on that kid's part!)

We talked about how you might say the words differently, and they tried that. Then, we talked about how you could sing them differently. They were a little hesitant to sing. In retrospect, I think I should have had us all sing something together first so they'd be more adventurous about trying things on their own. Something to incorporate next time.

Finally, I told them that the beginning of the piece had the same notes and words as the end: "Across the sweet mountains, won't you come to the call of your Ariel?" We talked about how that would be different at the beginning, when Ariel thinks Miranda will come, vs. the end, when Ariel knows he's lost her. A couple kids spoke the phrases differently for me, infusing emotion. And then I sang just the melody, without much expression, inviting them to listen carefully and think about the differences when I sang the full piece. I also asked them to listen for the flower petals part and for the "gaiment ou douloureusement."

My accompanist and I performed the whole song for them then. They were very attentive. At the end, they acknowledged that they'd noticed the different parts. We talked a little more about how the beginning vs. the end were different. Some kids thought the end was actually "lower". It's not actually lower in pitch, but it is darker in color. I talked about the idea of color, and my accompanist played that passage two different ways on the piano. I sang it two different ways. Again the idea of "lower" came up. One kid actually noticed that my pianist had brought out the lower registers of the piano more in his second playing. Very, very impressive.

All too soon it was time for them to leave. I love doing this sort of work! No matter where I am or what I'm doing, I really hope I can make outreach a significant part of my professional life.

~Hope