Music Through the Ages is an interactive concert which gives children a front row seat to the development of tonal music, helping them appreciate music from every culture and era. Each selection will feature an engaging spoken presentation that integrates each composer’s personal stories, as well as specific instrumental techniques, and insights into the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic underpinnings of each selection.
Program Outline:
1. Johann Sebastian Bach – the Grandfather of Tonal Music. Court Dance – Partita No. 1.
Exploring the role of meter and tempo in music through the court dance forms of Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Menuet and Gigue. Highlighting Bach’s prodigious ability to compose a fugue before breakfast, and what home life was like with his twenty children.
2. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – the Child Prodigy – Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Examining Variation in Music through Mozart’s own Twinkle Twinkle Little Star variations; following the harmony and melody even when it is totally disguised, just like in the jazz improvisation of later centuries.
3. Ludwig van Beethoven – the Misunderstood Misanthrope – The Moonlight Sonata
Sharing Beethoven’s own tragic upbringing, his struggles in midlife, and his ultimate triumph over deafness and personal isolation through his art and truth.
4. Frederic Chopin – the Hopeless Romantic – Funeral March and the Raindrop Prelude
Chopin’s battle with tuberculosis, the iconic funeral march, juxtaposed with its modern iteration, John Williams’ Imperial Death March, and the Romanticism of Chopin’s own heartfelt lyricism
5. Franz Liszt – the Rockstar Magician of the Piano – Transcendental Etude No 10 –
The very first touring solo concert pianist – his popularity and fame, revolutionary compositions and unique life, and ultimate peace and contentment found in his final years. Investigating his fascinating “three hand” keyboard techniques, making seemingly impossible feats a reality, the magician of the piano.
6. Maurice Ravel – the Impressionist Master – Painting Ondine with Bertrand’s Poetry
Delving into the tonal colors and textures of the piano, and Bertrand’s chilling tale of the water nymph whose love is rejected by a mortal, how Ravel can make the piano sound like a lake reflecting scintillating stars, whirlpools of warm currents, or the icy chill with which the piece breathes its final moments.
7. Duke Ellington – DC’s own trailblazer – Jazz version of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite
Sharing how classical music influenced literally all tonal music, from the the Blues, to the Beetles to Coldplay. The role of improvisation in music and how it stemmed from Mozart’s variations, how jazz harmony is quite similar to Ravel’s impressionist harmony, and the sheer expressive capacity carried onward from Chopin’s Romanticism into the jazz of today.