Colorado Symphony Musicurious Education Student Guide - 2018/19

STUDENT GUIDE

E D U CAT I O N P R O G RA M S O F T H E CO LO RA D O SY M P H O N Y

STUDENT GUIDE W E LCO M E TO

MUSICURIOUS! The Colorado Symphony musicians and I are all very excited you are coming to Boettcher Concert Hall for a field trip! The Myth and Legend concert will be fun for everyone. Every country and culture around the world and from every period in history has stories of myth and legends. You will hear pieces of music by composers from England, Germany, Norway, and Russia. We will take you on a journey to explore the world of myth and legend through symphonic music. We hope you have fun learning and preparing for your trip to hear the Colorado Symphony.

We’re having fun getting the music ready for you!

Bertie

Bertie Baigent Assistant Conductor

Boettcher Concert Hall!!

GETTING READY FOR THE CONCERT! ❶ ❷ ❸

Before you enter the concert hall, turn off cell phones and other electronic devices.

Listen attentively so you can hear and remember every note. We want you to talk about the concert on the trip back to school and at home later!

Feel free to clap and show your appreciation for the performance when the conductor has lowered his arms. The musicians love your enthusiastic clapping when the music is finished!

You may wear your regular school clothes or special occasion clothes if you’d like. Enjoying and engaging in a shared concert experience with your Colorado Symphony is always more important than what you wear to a concert.

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STUDENT GUIDE CO LO R A D O S YM P H O NY

CONDUCTORS

Music Director Brett Mitchell

Conductor Laureate Marin Alsop

Photo: Carol Friedman

Photo: Kym Thompson

Photo: Lock+Land.com

The conductor is one of the most important musicians in the orchestra because they get all of the instruments to play together as one big instrument.

The Colorado Symphony has five conductors: Music Director Brett Mitchell, Conductor Laureate Marin Alsop, Associate Conductor Christopher Dragon, Chorus Director Duain Wolfe, and Assistant Conductor Bertie Baigent.

Associate Conductor Christopher Dragon

Chorus Director Duain Wolfe

M E E T A S S I S TA N T CO N D U C TO R

Photo: Ben Durrant

BERTIE BAIGENT British-born Bertie Baigent is rapidly building an international reputation as an exciting and dynamic conductor-composer. He is the musical director of the Waterperry Opera Festival, the London Young Sinfonia, and in various contexts has conducted the WDR Sinfonieorchester, the Gürzenich-Orchester, the Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest, the Britten Sinfonia, the London Sinfonietta, the Orchestre National de Lille, and the Orchestre de Picardie. Bertie has assisted conductors including Sir Mark Elder, Edward Gardner, and Jac van Steen, and has participated in masterclasses with Martyn Brabbins, Pierre-André Valade, Harald Jers, and others. In 2017 he was awarded the Royal Academy of Music’s Sir Henry Wood Scholarship and Ernest Read Conducting Prize, and participated in the Deutscher Dirigentenpreis. Also at home in the world of

opera, recent engagements have included Così fan tutte at the Bedford Park Festival and the world premiere of Nero Monologues for Opera in the City; Bertie has also worked with Shadwell Opera, Helios Opera, OperaUpClose, and will conduct at Hampstead Garden Opera and Waterperry Opera Festival in the 2018/19 season. New music is particularly important to Bertie, with past and forthcoming collaborations including those with the London Sinfonietta, the Phaedra Ensemble, and 4|12 Collective. Bertie’s compositions have been widely performed by artists such as the Aurora Orchestra, the Bath Philharmonia, the Choir of St Paul’s Cathedral, and the viol consort Fretwork, and have been heard in venues such as the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the Royal Festival Hall. He has been awarded prizes and commissions by organizations including the Royal Philharmonic Society, the BBC, and the National Centre for Early Music. His works have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Classic FM, and other European radio stations, and are published by Stainer & Bell. Bertie is a prize-winning Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, and trained as a cellist and pianist before focusing on conducting and composition.

He graduated from the University of Cambridge with a double first in 2016, and completed an MA in conducting with Sian Edwards at the Royal Academy of Music, London.

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STUDENT GUIDE

G E T TO K N O W T H E T H E S YM P H O NY O R C H E S T R A

INSTRUMENT FAMILIES Your Colorado Symphony Orchestra is made up of 80 musicians playing instruments from one of four groups, or families, of instruments. Here are some facts about each instrument family.

THE BRASS FAMILY Brass - Tuba, Trombone, French Horn, Trumpet Brass family instruments are all made of metal. Brass players buzz their lips inside a round mouthpiece to produce the sound. If you look closely you’ll see that all of the brass instruments are one long tube that curves around becoming wider and bell shaped at the end. Brass players change pitches, or notes, by changing the pressure of their buzzing lips.

Modern brass instruments help with these pitch changes by using valves or a slide which tricks the instrument into thinking its tube is longer or shorter than it is. The trumpet has the smallest length of tube and therefore plays the highest pitches. French horn’s tube is longer and can play lower notes. Next is trombone, and finally the tuba which plays the lowest notes in the brass family. All that vibrating air on a metal surface causes the sound to project in a direct and loud way. For this reason they are often used to signal something important that demands your immediate attention.

French Horn

Tuba

Trombone Trumpet

THE STRING FAMILY Strings - Bass, Cello, Viola, Violin

Bass Violin

Cello

Viola

String family instruments are all made of wood and produce their sound by moving a stick with horse hair on it called a bow back and forth across the strings. String instruments of the orchestra each have only 4 strings, so to get additional pitches the players press their fingers down in various different spots on the string to trick it into thinking it’s longer or shorter. Just like the brass instruments’ tubes, the shorter the string is the higher the pitch, and the longer the string is the lower the pitch. The bass has the longest strings and therefore makes the lowest pitches. Much smaller than the bass but still played in an upright way is the cello, which makes the second lowest pitches in the string section. The viola looks almost exactly like the violin and is played on the shoulder, but because it’s bigger and has longer strings than the violin it plays medium high notes. The violin plays the highest notes because it is the very smallest and has the shortest strings.

Wood is a porous material which makes the sound warm, rich, and not as directed or loud as the brass instruments can be. Because the bow can make very long, sustained sounds (and also because the player doesn’t need to take breaths to produce the sound), string instruments are often used to create long luscious melodies and lots of never ending fast notes.

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STUDENT GUIDE

G E T TO K N O W T H E T H E S YM P H O NY O R C H E S T R A

THE PERCUSSION FAMILY Percussion - Timpani, Bass Drum, Piano, Harp, Snare Drum, Xylophone, Glockenspiel, Cymbals, Tambourine, Triangle

Timpani

Percussion instruments are those instruments which produce their sound by shaking, scraping, striking, or plucking. There are more percussion instruments than can possibly be listed and they are made from nearly any kind of material you can imagine! Percussion is the most versatile family of instruments when it comes to colors of sound. From the low timpani to the martial snare drum, the splashy cymbal to the shimmering triangle, the precise xylophone to the restless tambourine, the percussion section provides rhythm, color, punctuation and points of interest to the sound of of the orchestra.

Piano

Triangle Harp

Cymbals

Xylophone

Snare Drum

THE WOODWIND FAMILY Woodwinds - Bassoon, Clarinet, Oboe, Flute Bassoon

Oboe

Clarinet

Flute

Woodwind instruments are made of a combination of wood and metal. Like the brass instruments they are constructed from a tube, but unlike the brass instruments there are holes in the tube which can be covered or left open by keys or the player’s fingertips. Covering and uncovering the holes tricks the tube into thinking it’s longer or shorter which produces lower or higher pitches. To make a sound on the flute the player must blow air across an opening near the top of the flute, just like getting a sound from blowing across the top of a bottle. The clarinet uses a single flat piece of wood called a reed which vibrates against a mouthpiece as the player blows through it. Unlike the brass mouthpiece this one is used inside the players mouth. The bassoon and oboe use a double reed, which is a long, narrow piece of wood that has been specially shaped, folded in half, tied together, and then cut at the tip. These two pieces of reed vibrate against one another when the player blows air through it. Each of the woodwind instruments sounds different mostly due to the way the sound is produced. The bassoon is large and gets a lively and sometimes buzzy sound to its low notes. The clarinet, a medium sized instrument, can sound very smooth and play extremely softly. The oboe has a directed and clear quality similar to the trumpet but in a more plaintive and searching way. The flute has a beautiful light and airy sound which helps its high pitches float right into our ears. Because the woodwind family instruments sound so different from one another they are often used as individual soloists in the orchestra and to provide interesting color combinations with other instruments.

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STUDENT GUIDE

ABOUT THE COMPOSERS About the Myth and Legend musicurious Colorado Symphony youth concert composers:

Ludwig van Beethoven

December 16, 1770 - March 26, 1827

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and a pianist of the Classical and Romantic eras. He played his first public performance on the piano at age seven and had his first published composition at age 13. Beethoven was known to be hard working and innovative. He began to lose his hearing and eventually became almost completely deaf, but never stopped composing music and pushing the boundaries of the symphony orchestra. His Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus was composed in 1801 and marked Beethoven’s introduction to the Viennese stage. This symbolic ballet is based on the myth of Prometheus, a Greek god who gave fire to the people on Earth.

Edvard Grieg

June 15, 1843 - September 4, 1907

Edvard Grieg was a Norwegian composer who grew up in a musical family. At the age of 15 he began studying music at the Leipzig Conservatory in Germany. After that, Grieg performed as a pianist all over Europe, returning home every summer to compose. Grieg used Norwegian folk music melodies and rhythms in the music he wrote. Grieg composed music in the Romantic style, mainly for the orchestra and the piano. He is best known for composing the music set to Henrik Ibsen’s play, Peer Gynt, a tale of Peer Gynt’s epic journey to the four corners of the globe. Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” describes the character’s adventure in the underground Kingdom of the Trolls.

Richard Wagner

May 22, 1813 - February 13, 1883

Richard Wagner was a German composer and is considered to be a musical genius and one of the world’s most influential composers. Both Beethoven and Mozart heavily influenced Wagner's style.

Wagner was a musical innovator and developed the leitmotif, or leading theme — pronounced “lite moteef”— which is a recurring melody that is associated with a person, place or an idea. The leitmotif provides thematic unity in a musical composition. To this day, film composers widely use this technique in the scores of their music. Wagner is best known for his Ring Cycle, a series of four full-length operas, which took twenty-six years to write, and four nights to perform the complete Cycle. Wagner’s The Ride of the Valkyries is from the second of the four Ring operas and is widely used in films and television.

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STUDENT GUIDE

ABOUT THE COMPOSERS Gustav Holst

September 21, 1874 – May 25, 1934

Gustav Holst was an English composer and also grew up in a musical family. As a young child, Holst played the piano, organ, and trombone. At the age of 12, Holst began composing music and knew he wanted to become a composer. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London. In addition to composing, Holst dedicated much of his life to teaching music as the Director of Music at the St. Paul's Girls' School. It was during this time where Holst composed his most notable and famous work, The Planets, a seven-piece movement composition representing different planets that took two years to complete.

In "Mercury" and "Mars," Holst composes a musical picture of these two planets which vividly describes their characteristics.

Igor Stravinsky

June 17, 1882 - April 6, 1971

Igor Stravinsky grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia and studied composition with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

Even though he immigrated to the United States in 1939, became a citizen in 1945, and lived in Los Angeles most of his life, he was considered to be a Russian style composer, pianist, and conductor.

Stravinsky was one of the most important and influential composers of the entire 20th century. Early in his career, between 1910 and 1913 he collaborated with a ballet company and wrote 3 major works for them. One of these, The Rite of Spring, caused a riot at its first performance but became very popular and was later used in the Disney movie Fantasia. His ballet The Firebird, in which "Berceuse and Finale" is the glorious ending, was composed in 1910 and was Stravinsky's breakthrough composition. This composition is inspired by a Russian folk story about a magical firebird that helps Prince Ivan defeat an evil king and restore peace to the world.

Traditional La Llorona La llorona is a myth from Mexico. The story is about. a woman who is happily married and has two children, but one day her husband leaves her and never returns. Years later, she sees her husband again by a river, and she is so angry that she throws her children into the water! Then she realizes what she has done, and jumps in to save them, but it is too late. Ever since, her spirit has been wandering the river crying out painfully in search for her children.

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STUDENT GUIDE

ORCHESTRA SEATING MAP

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STUDENT GUIDE

TIME LINE O F H I S TO R I C A L E V E N T S

Origin of symphony orchestra

1607

Colorado Symphony is formed

United States becomes independent nation

1776

Amelia Earhart is the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic 1932

Beethoven composes The Creatures of Prometheus

1800

First Superman comic issued

First African American newspaper published

1827

World War II

First Braille book published

1829

Rosa Parks’ arrest sparks Civil Rights Movement

1955

First bicycle “Velocipede”

1839

Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech

1963

Baseball rules defined for the first time

1845

First men on the moon

1969

Wagner composes “Ride of the Valkyries”

1854

Apple Computer Company created

1976

Peak of Underground Railroad

1865

John Williams writes "Imperial March” from Star Wars 1980

Grieg wrote Peer Gynt

1874

Sally Ride, first woman in space

Colorado becomes a state

1876

Shakespeare’s Globe Theater discovered by archaeologists 1988

1910

Internet becomes available for personal use

1991 1997

Stravinsky composes The Firebird

Holst composes The Planets

1914-1916

First Harry Potter book published

World War 1

1914-1918

Your field trip!

19th Amendment giving women right to vote

1922

1938 1935-1945

1983

2018-2019

1920

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STUDENT GUIDE

WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER? Now that you have experienced the Myth and Legend concert with your Colorado Symphony, it’s time to review and reflect! n

Use this space to write about your observations.

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What were some surprises?

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What did you enjoy the most about the concert?

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How did the music sound different live in Boettcher Concert Hall?

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Think about how you would innovate and develop the symphony orchestra.

n

What new or different instruments would you add?

n

How would you want them used?

n

What sorts of new or different sounds would you want the orchestra to make?

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STUDENT GUIDE

We'd love to hear from you!

TELL US ABOUT YOUR TIME AT YOUR COLORADO SYMPHONY! What is your name?

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What is your school? _____________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________________

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