Interesting sites for the September Holidays

Here's another Silly Symphony. If you listen very carefully, at the very end, you will hear a part of the overture from the Opera William Tell.



Here's another Walt Disney Silly Symphony about musical instruments.



Here's a new dance to learn. Might be good for our next disco.

Term 3, Week 10: Last week of term request session

This week we having a "request session" which means students get to ask for their favourite songs, videos and activities to sing, watch or do again.

This has become an all-time, much-requested  favourite, and we are all getting very good at working on the railroad...

We also get to listen to one of Mrs Vincent's and Mrs Lee's favourite stories from when we were young, when  children wrote to radio stations asking them to play a favourite song or story on the Children's Request Session on Sunday mornings: the story of the Waltz of the Flowers .

This is a video of  the Waltz of the Flowers from the Nutcracker ballet by Tchaikovsky.

We looked at The Grasshopper and the Ants story from Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies.   Last week we looked at how Vivaldi composed music to represent the season spring, and this week we looked and listened to how the composer of this music represented summer and winter. Listen for the theme music of the grasshopper and how the music changes to show how the ants were busy.

Term 3 Week 10: Spring Concerto by Vivaldi

Continuing from last week's work we did on Antonio Vivaldi and his concertos for violins (The Four Seasons Op. 8, nos.1-4)

Il Prette Rosso - Antonio Vivaldi

The series of concertos which includes the Four Seasons was published in Amsterdam in 1725. They were dedicated to Count Wezel von Morzin who was a Bohemian nobleman and Vivaldi's patron (a bit like a sponsor nowadays).

A concerto is a piece of music made for a solo instrument and an orchestra. If the solo instrument (sometimes there might be two) is a violin, it is called a violin concerto. If the solo instrument is a piano, it's called a piano concerto).

During this time, Vivaldi was travelling all  around Europe and the Four Seasons was very popular. The French King Louis XV liked it very much when Vivaldi performed it in Paris in 1730.

Each 'season' is accompanied by a special 14-lined poem called a sonnet. These sonnets describe the setting and events of the music. 

Each season  concerto has 3 separate movements, written for a solo violin and an orchestra plus a continuous line  of music for a bass instrument, organ or harpsichord. This helped keep everyone in time when there was no conductor.

Concerto in E 'Spring'

Allegro   opens the music. It is a fresh and happy tune. A soloist and other  violins imitate birds singing (runs and trills); a 'flowing' passage represents a stream and a gentle breeze; rapid scales, tremolo,  and scampering solo passages represent a thunder storm. 

Largo is a long and tender melody for a solo violin with other strings accompanying, and this represents a peaceful scene of a shepherd and his dog dozing under some trees.

Allegro is a relaxed country (pastoral) dance where the soloist plays along with, and leads, the rest of the orchestra. 

An Italian sonnet has a special form. It has 8 lines then 6 lines. 
(Can you see there are 2 lots of 4 lines and 2 lots of 3 lines?)

The first part of the sonnet tells of birds, brooks, trees, the breeze, storms,  thunder and lightning.
The second part tells of rustling leaves, a goatherd,  bagpipes playing, a dog barking, and dancing  

(Note - there is a 'g' missing from 'dog' in the poem image)

 

Learn the parts of the violin and test yourself on the picture underneath.

From the bird feed nyc

From the birdfeednyc

This is easy violin music for Spring, but it might help you learn the names of the notes as well.

Here's another listening map of the first Allegro. Can you follow it?  

You can see more images of Vivaldi and Venice on this blog.

Here's a very easy chart of how to play a simple version of the first allegro of Spring.

Here's a video of the entire Spring Concerto with images of Spring - in Europe - and the words of the sonnet written to match the appropriate place in the music

Here's a group of musicians playing Spring in Venice. Watch for images and video clips of other scenes in Venice.

This is an animated graphic showing the tempo  (speed of the beat) of the first allegro of Spring. Can you see patterns and rhythms in the movement of the images?

Here's another listening map  called Prima vera which is Spanish for spring. 

Who would have thought there would be a link between sushi, rock guitar and Vivaldi's Spring Concerto? 

This electric guitar and drum rock version gives a very good example of the change in dynamics from forte to piano, and you can see the mimicking of the bird sound done well, too. It's also good for your air guitar and air drum practice.

 

Term 3, Week 9 - Spring has Sprung

 It is now officially spring! (Please note, seasons do not have capital letters, unless they are used in titles as above - and including titles of pieces of music, or at the beginning of sentences. Otherwise, they are written: summer, autumn, winter, spring.) 


The most famous piece of music written about the seasons  is called The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi. This week we are listening to  Spring

Antonio Vivaldi  was born in born in Venice in 1678 and  died in Vienna in 1741. He was an Italian composer.  He was a very important composer in Italy. He became a priest and was called il Prete Rosso  -  the Red Priest - because of his red hair. Notice you cannot see his red hair in this painting because it's covered with a wig. He wrote more than 400 concertos  for various instruments,  but especially for the violin.  He taught at a school for orphaned girls and  wrote a lot of his music for his pupils to play. His most popular work is the group of four violin concertos called “The Four Seasons”. Each concerto describes a season: spring, summer autumn, and winter. Vivaldi's music is in the Baroque style which means an ornate style of music which was popular from 1600 - 1750.

Interesting facts about Vivaldi:
- There was an earthquake in Venice on the day he was born
- He had asthma and was often quite sick.
- He was a quick worker and could write a concerto in a day and an opera in a week.
- a lot of his work was discovered after his death, and some was discovered in 1926  and 1973 

Here's an activity page about Vivaldi's Spring  with a music map to work out the differences between loud and soft, and many and few violinists.

 This is Itzhak Perlman conducting an orchestra and playing the violin to Spring by Vivaldi.

Electric guitar version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons - Spring 

Sand animation  by Ferenc Cakó (born 1950), a Hungarian artist, to Vivaldi's Spring

Here's our favourite drummer   Andrea Vadruccci (Vadrum) playing his version of  Vivaldi's Spring 

Here's a group of women singing Vivaldi's  Spring  a cappella    Listen to how they make all the different sounds.


Karaoke sing-along to Let It Go from "Frozen".

Everything is Awesome Karaoke. 

There's a hole in my bucket - Muppet style.  The words change a bit in this version, but the story is the same.

There's a hole in my bucket - sing-along karaoke.


 Here's New Zealand's own Topp Twins singing along to the book "There's a Hole in My Bucket".