From the Field

This month and last - teachers from all over Central Indiana are learning what Johannes Brahms Symphony No. 4 has to do with the Three Little Pigs.  What?!? You Ask? 

Well, each year over 25,000 students attend the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra's Young People's Discovery Concerts where they "discover" the exciting sounds of the symphony.  Historically, these Discovery concerts are many people's first trip to the symphony.  In fact, over a million people have attended these concerts over the decades and it's not unusual for me to hear stories from adult symphony goers saying their first trip to the ISO was as a child on a school field trip!

This year's program, "Musical Storytelling", features several programmatic works - meaning music representing characters, ideas or stories.  Examples include Mozart and Bernstein overtures (aka, musical abbreviations of the full length works) of The Marriage of Figaro and West Side Story.  The penultimate work on the program is The Firebird Suite by Igor Stravinsky based on the Russian folktales of the magical bird.

Oddly, Brahms' Scherzo from Symphony No. 4 appears on this "Musical Storytelling" concert.  An example of absolute music, or rather, music that tells no story nor conveys an idea, this piece may appear out of place.  I sat in the first of two teacher workshops to specifically see how master teacher, Lisa Sullivan was going to connect this piece to the program's theme.  Little did I know, I was in for a treat.

Well, you all know the story of the three little pigs, the houses and the recurring theme of "I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down!" I'll admit that when I think of the Scherzo from Brahms' 4th symphony, a nursery story is far from my mind... alas, no longer!  She assigned themes from the movement to very parts of the story: the wolf, the pigs, the huff and puff and the celebration at the end.  Extracting and downloading these themes and pictures onto her computer, she used PowerPoint to tell the story.  The story version she chose to tell was Yo, Hungry Wolf (A Nursery Rap) by Davis Vozar (ISBN 0-440-40953-5). 

The storytelling was delightful, but what ensued next was truly memorable.  Teachers were introduced to rhythmic words created by Lisa and divided into groups.  Each group was assigned the task of creating movements truly worthy of a child's rap. We had a ball!!  

Check out the video below of what the teachers created.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoZQRRUFnMM

Now, my favorite parts of this movement will always be the recurring ding-a-linging of the triangle, but I will definitely be listening to Brahms' work a little differently now.  Next time you listen to the piece, see if you can make out the themes representing the wolf, pigs or celebration.

I also challenge you to add a comment to this post and let us know about your first trip to the ISO.  Was it on a school field trip like the Young People's Discovery Concert??

Below is a link to more information about this upcoming program.  The next teacher workshop is scheduled for Tuesday, Jan 5.
http://www.indianapolissymphony.org/learningcommunity/elementary/discovery