1. Listen blindly. Listen to a work not knowing who wrote it, or the title of it, or the style and when it was written. Just you and the physical music, with no preconceptions or artificial mental expectations or without knowing anything about it’s origins or classifications.

2. Listen bodily. Listen with your gut, your own visceral reactions, your own emotional responses, your own freedom of imagination. Approach music as an innocent, like a primitive or a baby, and enjoy the “nourishment of impulses” that feed your body and mind. This kind of listening can be exhilarating, bewildering, exciting, calming, inspiring, emotional, or mesmerizing, but the physicality of “real world” sounds is key to this visceral musical experience. Let your whole body literally vibrate, resonate, and pulsate with the music, in a literal sense, and enjoy the sheer physicality of sound.

3. Listen with both ears.  This means focusing on the sounds as well as the overall flow of the music. Listen to the individual parts and the whole of the music, from the tiny details to the shapes of the phrases to the overarching form. Listen to the changes, to the repetitions, the recapitulating elements, the rhythms, the themes, and the instruments physically creating the sounds. Listen stereophonically with both ears, to bring into focus the whole from different perspectives of listening, just as the eyes view stereoptically through binoculars, bringing the world into a harmonious singular focus from two different visual perspectives. In order to learn this focused art of listening, sometimes it is helpful to listen with the left ear only or the right ear only, because the brain processes sounds differently in each hemisphere. Focused listening with both ears finally unites the parts within the whole, tying together the innocence of pure, immediate sounds with the experience of reflection and holistic context. As you listen with both ears, you gradually assimilate experiences into a wider frame of context and expectations, enriching your understanding of music.

4. Organize your listening experiences. Enjoy the immediacy of music, but find a disciplined way to track your listening experiences. Group musical works in ways that help you remember them, and compare them with others by organizing them in different ways: by composer, style, historical period, genre, instrument, favorite artists. Deepen your reservoir of music by taking notes, comparing music, counting the works that you really “own” as part of your own personal listening and/or performance history. Save your concert programs, record in a notebook new music as you encounter it, along with your reactions to the experience.

5. Listen to live music. No recording or video can replicate the full experience of listening to music live, in the flesh, with the musicians who are performing the music. This enriches your own experience of music, and it is equally vital to the musicians who are performing the music. Music is a social art, in which the musicians communicate directly with the listening audience. The living, breathing personal exchange of music dies when live music is replaced by second-hand music.  So support your local symphony, opera, musical theater, ballet and other musical groups, and enjoy the personal human bond that live music offers to both listeners and performers.

6. Join in the music making. Improve listening skills by performing music, especially with others. Sing, dance, play an instrument, move to the beat, or just tap your foot. But physically enter the world of music to focus your active listening skills. Playing music together requires listening actively and cooperatively to others, making music the ultimate social art.  Becoming physically part of the music as a performer necessitates and fine-tunes our listening skills.

7. Expand your listening world. Indulge in the music you love, but adventure periodically into new worlds of music that are foreign to you. If you are a big symphony buff, try a Gregorian chant or an intimate solo or chamber concert for a change. You may love rock concerts, but venture to an opera to understand that the same emotional combustion of love and music once had Italian audiences shouting in pleasure or despair. If you only listen to Western music, taste a little of the East in the complexities of Indian or Chinese music. If you love contemporary folk music, discover the folk tunes rampant in Mozart, Beethoven or Copland. If you normally turn to classical music for soulful comfort, enjoy a change of pace by sinking into a blues ballad, or a Piaf chanson, or a tearful Portuguese fado. Opera buff? Go see a ballet for a wordless change of pace.  If you are trapped in repertoire of the 19th century, venture forth into the 20th and 21st, as there’s a lot going on. Push your sonic limits beyond the comfort of your own narrow world of music. Ultimately, as your music listening grows, so do you. Your character, your morality, your tastes, your aspirations, are often reflected in your listening choices. Widen your listening framework, and you will find yourself growing and developing and changing, and yes, even improving.

8. Don’t let a day pass without listening to music. It’s not enough to go to music class or practice your instrument daily. Incorporate a 10-minute diet of listening into your daily menu. Something old, and something new. Enjoy the daily “comfort” foods of your familiar musical diet, but also whet your appetite with new, unfamiliar music every day. Record your impressions (see #4) and watch your experiences and tastes expand!

Footnote:

Roger Shattuck, who mentored me in graduate school, once wrote a surprisingly simple-sounding yet thought-provoking essay entitled “How to Read a Book.”  His ideas on “how to read a book” directly inspired my own essay on “how to listen to music.”

To create, one must first imagine; to imagine, one must first learn to see, to listen, to feel, to perceive. Music and the arts are the cornerstone of education in the broadest sense. They open our eyes and ears, develop and transform us personally, connect us emotionally with others, and offer a universal bridge of understanding in a troubled world. Music and the arts play a lifetime role as a child develops into adulthood. They help us integrate body, mind, and spirit, and help us forge bonds with others. The arts encourage us to explore who we are and what we stand for, inspire us to discover our “better angels” as individuals and as societies, and help us overcome barriers of language, generations, and geography to assert our essential humanity. The arts are a beacon of freedom and common cause, and have been the “movers and shakers of the world forever, it seems,” reasserting the universal rights of the human spirit whenever and wherever they are threatened.

From the first soothing sounds of a mother’s lullaby to the bright colors and comforting touch of a favorite blanket or toy, the miraculous world of infancy begins to open up. Babies react to sights and sounds around them, connecting emotions and meanings to what they see and hear. Soon they interact with the outer world as they enter a creative phase of imitating external sounds, rhythms, movements, smiles, gestures. They are, in effect, hooked on the elements of art that surround them: the lines, shapes, textures, colors, patterns, movements, rhythms, expressions, and forms that connect them to their ever-expanding world. The arts help wire and integrate young brains for lifelong learning–energizing and connecting the body, mind, and feelings. An instinctive love of music, poetry, and dramatic play is fostered through nursery rhymes, singing, dancing, and rhythm games, just as the gloriously messy and colorful world of art beckons with unlimited possibilities in finger paints, play dough, bubbles, and blocks. Storytelling, tactile toys and books, pretend games, and games of hiding and discovery like Peekaboo and Hide ‘n Seek stir imaginations and add excitement in the fantastic fray of a toddler’s perceptions. But none of this is mere child’s play: early exposure to the arts lays a complex groundwork of mental, physical, and emotional connections that opens the door to a lifetime of curiosity, learning, experimenting, problem solving, understanding, and creativity.

The arts are at the heart of every child. And the arts must be at the heart of education. If we choose to ignore children’s basic instincts for music and art at early ages, or fail to nourish their innate love of the arts throughout their education as they mature, we will as a society have “missed the beat” and “missed the boat.” The ancient Greeks knew the value of arts in education. Aristotle thought the cornerstones of education should be music for the mind and spirit and gymnastics for the body. Centuries later John F. Kennedy expressed our need for the arts this way:
“The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, is very close to the center of a nation’s purpose. . .and is a test of the quality of a nation’s civilization.”

Music in Motion’s 2012 catalog hopes to be true to the spirit of both Aristotle and Kennedy, by presenting the best in music and movement education for all ages, along with complementary art, dance, and creative dramatics, to redirect the arts “to the center of a nation’s purpose,” where they belong. The arts, like the heart, pulsate at the center of our common humanity. They are, simply, our life blood.

Jill and Michael Gallina share news of their exciting new musical that highlights the importance of literature and reading:

If you are interested in a musical that takes place entirely on risers and integrates music and children’s literature into one easy-to-produce package, we hope you’ll consider our latest “Rise and Shine” musical SING ME A STORY: Classic Stories Throughout Time Come to Life in Song and Rhyme for Grades 2-5. Given the fact that literature is such an integral part of every child’s learning experiences, we created a musical that introduces children to scenes from children’s classics all set within the magical medium of music! What better way than music to whet children’s appetites for becoming lifelong readers? What better way than music to support literature-based incentive programs such as “Read Across America?”

Sing Me a Story includes original songs that are used to highlight the very essence of some of literature’s best-loved children’s stories. Wander in “The Secret Garden” or journey to far-away lands and meet such characters as Alice in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter, Thumbelina, Pinocchio, Tinkerbell, the Ugly Duckling, and the Little Mermaid. We realize the unrelenting expectations placed on music teachers and thus created the Rise and Shine musical format to enable teachers to perform the entire production on risers with optional props, hand motions, and basic riser choreography.

Sing Me A Story musical kit includes:

- easy-to-memorize rhyming dialogue
- director’s score
- singers’ parts (for unison or optional 2-part songs)
- simple choreography, prop, and performance suggestions
- American Sign Language instructions
- reproducible student pages
- enhanced StudioTrax CD with both accompaniment and full performance tracks, plus reproducible poster, program, clip art, and composer’s info

 As musicians, we are of course well aware of the importance that music plays in the curriculum as a viable entity unto itself, but with budget cuts and music positions being threatened across the country, why not deliver the one-two punch and show how music can also be most the effective way to teach and extend learning into all other areas of the curriculum!

–Guest blog by Jill and Michael Gallina

 Sing Me A Story is now available at Music in Motion.

True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.
     – George Gershwin

Born Sept. 26, 1898 in Brooklyn, New York
Died July 11, 1937 in Hollywood, California

George Gershwin, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, is the quintessential American composer. His music-making started in Tin Pan Alley and wound up on Broadway and in the concert halls of America. He fulfilled his destiny and lived up to his own definition of music: “True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.”  If ever a musician was attuned to his age and country, it was George Gershwin.

What a pity his sudden death cut short the music that flowed from this Tin Pan Alley pianist/composer whose Jazz-age songs, Broadway and Hollywood musicals, piano and concert works had catapulted him to the pinnacle of success at a young age.  Gershwin’s first published song called “When You Want ‘Em, You Can’t Have ‘Em” earned him five dollars. Soon after he composed “Swanee” (with lyricist Irving Ceaser) and sold over a million copies. His star continued to rise until at age 39 he suddenly died, following a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. An irony of his short life is that estimates of earnings accrued during his lifetime rate him as the wealthiest composer of all time (The Guardian). Alas, “When You Want ‘Em, You Can’t Have ‘Em” and when you’ve earned the dough there’s no time to spend it.

Along with many popular song hits, his larger works included Broadway musicals  Lady Be Good (1924), Funny Face (1927), Strike Up the Band (1927), and Girl Crazy (1930); his folk opera Porgy and Bess (1935); and orchestral works (also used in films) Rhapsody in Blue for piano and orchestra (1924),   An American in Paris (1928), and Shall We Dance (1937).

Hear Gershwin playing his own Rhapsody in Blue in an early recording, which seems a bit fast but is not without its charms, and I love the “vinyl” sound quality of these old recordings:

 Personal Footnote:
In my own life Rhapsody in Blue was pivotal. On a trip to Dallas from my small home town in West Texas, I bought a copy of Rhapsody in Blue in Whittle’s Music Store, a revered Dallas institution which no longer exists.  I convinced my piano teacher Blanche Freeman to let me tackle it. I put everything I had into learning that piece, and it gave back generously. I have never identified with a work as closely as I did Rhapsody in Blue. The big jazz-inspired sounds of the city you hear in the piece captured my small-town ears and imagination. Even today I get inspired when walking on the streets of New York, and I thank Gershwin for the music that still sings in my ears and heart. And I still have my cherished copy of Rhapsody in Blue, with its tattered blue cover.

Educational resources on Gershwin

Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue by Anna Harwell Celenza, illustrated by JoAnn E. Kitchel. Introduce kids to the story and music of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in this Hardback and CD.  George Gershwin reads in the newspaper that he is performing a new concerto in Aeolian Hall in a few weeks. This is news to him! With encouragement from Paul Whiteman, and his brother Ira, he takes on the task and creates a truly American concerto–a musical kaleidoscope of urban sounds of the Jazz Age. Along the way we get glimpses of the musical scene in the 20′s in America. CD has a performance by Gershwin on a 1925 piano roll and accompanied by the Columbia Jazz Band. Hardback & CD #6582  $21.95 (available online at Music in Motion) 

Gershwin DVD. Dennis Kobray, an accomplished pianist and actor, portrays composer George Gershwin in full costume, using drama and musical performances to draw the viewer into the composer’s world. Students meet the composer face-to-face, hearing of his hardships, sacrifices, and triumphs. Elem.-high school. A tour de force! 54 min. Purchase includes public performance rights. DVD #5830  $24.95 (from Music in Motion)

Getting to Know. . .George Gershwin. Mike Venezia introduces young readers to classical music and to the lives of composers through playful tales, cartoons and source illustrations from the period.  This Gershwin book is one of a series for ages 4-9. Paperback Q364  $7.95 (from Music in Motion)

Born Sept. 25, 1906 in St. Petersburg, Russia
Died Aug. 9, 1975 in Moscow, Russia

A product of the Bolshevik Revolution, Shostakovich was the most famous of all  Soviet composers. He led a politically and personally troubled life, yet produced some of the century’s most celebrated and frequently performed works even today .

Born into a politically explosive era, with a revolutionary grandfather, leftist trade unionist father and a piano teaching mother, is it any wonder his political and musical wires were crossed? The demons of his life were the political fears and threats which constantly hovered over his career. He was the “darling” of the Soviets one moment and branded a “counter-revolutionary” in his music the next moment. His tumultuous relationship with Stalin was a yoke he could never shed, and his music always involved a dreaded dance with the devil of Soviet censorship and artistic control. His works were officially denounced in 1936 and 1948, and were periodically banned. Yet the ever popular Shostakovich received many accolades during his long career, from both the Russian people and the official Soviet state.

Shostakovich composed 15 symphonies, among them the popular “War” Symphonies Nos. 4 – 9 (which some thought were his musical protest against the crimes of Stalin), 15 string quartets, 6 concertos, numerous other chamber and orchestral works, piano pieces including 2 sonatas and 24 preludes and fugues for piano (like Bach),  2 operas and an operetta, 3 ballets, songs, cantatas, oratorios, stage and film music. His music ran the emotional gamut, from “warlike” and harshly propagandist to lyric and personal.  Probably because of his “pact with the Soviet devil,” Shostakovich’s place in musical history is controversial. While musicologist David Fanning in Grove writes that “he succeeded in forging a musical language of colossal emotional power,” Pierre Boulez dismissed him as a second or  even third-rate Mahler. English composer/musicologist Robin Holloway described his music as "battleship-grey in melody and harmony, factory-functional in structure; in content all rhetoric and coercion." But the reality of Shostakovich’s musical achievement should be judged apart from harsh political reactions to the man who, as many perceived, lacked the courage of his private convictions in standing up to Communist censorship and control. Please enjoy the richness and the inventiveness of his music, and judge not the man in political hindsight.

TESTIMONY: STORY OF SHOSTAKOVICH DVD

Tony Palmer’s film stars Ben Kingsley as Shostakovich. The film dramatizes the life of the Russian composer who opposed the directives of Stalin and defied him with his music. Palmer sensitively uses Shostakovich’s music to enhance the drama, and to deepen our understanding of how the composer felt about what was happening in his homeland. With excerpts from 11 symphonies and more, performed by the London Philharmonic. 151 min. DVD 5943 $29.95
                  (available at Music in Motion)

An interesting footnote to musical history:

A lighter side of Shostakovich was his passionate love of soccer, as heard in his 1929 ballet The Golden Age when he recreates an actual soccer match. Enjoy Shostakovich’s energetic soccer match–a first in music history and a thrillingly athletic display of programmatic music.  (In this Soviet ballet the Communist team travels abroad to compete with the “capitalists,” and you can guess who wins!)

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) wrote numerous concertos, many of them for the young ladies who resided in the Venetian orphanage where Vivaldi was employed for most of his working career. (Many of these “orphans” were daughters of affluent  noblemen and their mistresses, and they lived in very comfortable circumstances and were given excellent musical training.)  Some of Vivaldi’s concertos are highly descriptive, including his most famous “Four Seasons” Concertos.  Vivaldi himself wrote descriptive titles and poems that accompanied each movement of the concertos in the Four Seasons cycle. Here is a translation of the titles and verses that accompanied Concerto #3 in F Major, “Autumn”:

Movement 1: Allegro (Peasant Dance and Song)
The peasant celebrates with song and dance the harvest safely gathered in.
The cup of Bacchus flows freely, and many find their relief in deep slumber.

Movement 2: Adagio molto (Sleeping after the harvest celebration)
The singing and the dancing die away
as cooling breezes fan the pleasant air,
inviting all to sleep
without a care.

Movement 3: Allegro (The Hunt)
The hunters emerge at dawn,
ready for the chase,
with horns and dogs and cries.
Their quarry flees while they give chase.
Terrified and wounded, the prey struggles on,
but, harried, dies?

Now enjoy the music of “Autumn,” as performed in the National Botanical Gardens of Wales by Julia Fischer on violin, accompanied by the  Academy of St. Martin’s in the Field.

Concerto No.3 in F Major, RV 293, "AUTUMN"

Tips for Teacher

1. Ask students if Vivaldi’s titles and verses for the movements are reflected in his actual music? Ask them to point out events in the poem when they hear them in the music. Discuss the tempos for each movement, and why Vivaldi chose them to express his musical and poetic ideas.
2. Discuss what a harvest festival is, and what it would mean to the peasants. Why would music be important during a festival?
3. Invent your own “peasant dance” and perform it to the music.
4. Show the class Pieter Breugel’s painting “The Peasant Dance.” Discuss the feasting, dancing, and revelry. Ask why the peasants might be celebrating, and what season of the year it might be.

5. Discuss what autumn means to children and families today.What events do they enjoy that occur only in this season?
6. Ask students to write a poem about autumn.
7. Is there an American holiday that happens in the fall, where we enjoy a feast?
8. Celebrate the changing of the season with a “listening” walk, and discuss sights, sounds, and the weather, to see what signs of autumn you can find. (And when you get home, pour a cup of hot apple cider and listen to Vivaldi’s “Autumn” again!)

Born: September 23, 1930, Albany, Georgia
Died: June 10, 2004, Beverly Hills, Calif.

Ray Charles was born into poverty and at the age of 5 tragically witnessed the death of his younger brother who drowned in his mother’s laundry tub. Even at this age he loved music and started playing piano in a local cafe. Blinded by age 7, he attended St. Augustine School for the Deaf and Blind, where he also studied music. After the death of his mother, at the age of 15 he left school to begin his professional career, successfully overcoming all physical, personal and racial obstacles to become one of the century’s great musicians. He combined gospel, rhythm and blues, and jazz, in his music.  As composer, pianist, singer, and band leader,  first inspired by Nat King Cole,  he became an original and popular musical icon, recording such hits as Mess Around, I’ve Got a Woman, What’d I Say, Georgia on My Mind, Hit the Road Jack, and more. He received 13 Grammys, including a lifetime achievement award in 1987, and in 1986 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and also honored at the Kennedy Center.

Ray Charles appeals to children too, as seen in his CD for Chicka Chicka Boom Boom #6974.  This popular children’s book by Bill Martin Jr. & John Archambault, illus. by Lois Ehlert, includes a CD by Ray Charles. Lively rhymes, cheerful pictures and Ray Charles’s bluesy voice are perfectly mixed in this beloved alphabet chant. Hear audio samples here.

Kids and adults alike will also get a lift from Ray Charles’s upbeat 1978 performance of Disney’s Zip a Dee Do Dah.

Born Sept. 5, 1912 in Los Angeles, California
Died Aug. 11, 1992 in Manhattan, New York

“There are two things that don’t have to mean anything;
one is music, and the other is laughter.”
- John Cage, paraphrasing Immanuel Kant. (Cage agreed with Kant that music and laughter don’t have to mean anything in order to give us deep pleasure.)

Avant garde composer, writer, artist, and philosopher, John Cage was a unique figure whose influence on 20th century music, art, and dance was perhaps even more important than his own artistic output. In fact, his most famous work was 4’33”, a piece composed for piano (or any other instruments!) that consisted of
4 minutes and 33 seconds of absolute silence, divided into 3 movements. So obviously this minimalist loved a good laugh, and the joke doesn’t stop there: 4’33”  has even been included on several CD collections! Cage shared a lifelong partnership, both personally and professionally, with choreographer Merce Cunningham, and the two of them made a lasting impact on contemporary dance. As an artist and printmaker himself, Cage also influenced fellow artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and others in the art world.

Cage studied with Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg, radical composers in their own right.  He taught experimental music at Wesleyan University, where he was affiliated until his death in 1992.  He also taught at Mills College, UCLA, the Cornish College of the Arts, and The New School. Cage was influenced by Indian philosophy, Zen Buddhism, and I Ching, the Chinese classical text on changing events, which he used as a tool for composing chance or aleatory music. As a minimalist composer, he also experimented with found sounds, electronic music, and “prepared” piano (which consisted of sticking nuts, bolts, rubber, plates, etc. between the strings of the piano to create the effect of an entire percussion orchestra). Prepared piano often produced exotic effects resembling mbiras, marimbas, bells, gamelan, wood blocks and other percussion. Listen to Cage’s Sonata for Prepared Piano:

John Cage’s Sonata X for Prepared Piano

Now meet the humorous, iconic John Cage near the end of his life, as he expresses his thoughts about listening, music, sounds. . . and silences:

Born Sept. 4, 1892 in Aix-en-Provence, France
Died June 22, 1974 in Geneva, Switzerland

“Don’t be afraid of writing something people can remember and whistle. Don’t ever feel discomfited by a melody".  Milhaud to his student Burt Bacharach

Milhaud was a student of Charles Widor, Vincent d’Indy, and Paul Dukas.  A member of Les Six (“Group of Six” avant garde French composers), Milhaud was prolific and composed with apparent ease in many genres including operas, ballets, symphonies, concertos, solo and chamber works. Polytonality, jazz idioms (after his visit to Harlem), and Brazilian rhythms (after living in Brazil) are found in some of his works. His jazz ballet The Creation of the World and his ballet Le Boeuf sur le Toit (Ox on the Roof) were two of his most famous works. He also was a master of counterpoint, composing two string quartets (No. 14 and 15) which can also be performed as an octet (quite a contrapuntal feat!). While in Brazil he worked with French Ambassador and famous poet and playwright Paul Claudel, for whom he later wrote incidental music.

Composer, pianist, and eminent teacher, Milhaud taught alternate years at Mills College in California and the Paris Conservatory from 1947-1971.  Among his famous students are Dave Brubeck, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Burt Bacharach, Morton Subotnick, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Iannis Xenakis.

Enjoy Milhaud’s exuberant Brasileira from Scaramouche for 2 Pianos:

 Educator Guides to the Operas

Plan an opera study unit for your students based on one of the operas in the
2010-11 Metropolitan Opera season, climaxing with a Night at the Opera in a local movie theater or at your school. The Met Live in HD series offers free opera-specific educational guides you can use to prepare students for viewing the opera performance, including classroom activities, story synopsis, background on the opera and composer, musical highlights with audio clips, post-opera activities, and more.

Note to Teachers: Have your kids write a paragraph on their “Night at the Opera,” and we’ll share some on our blog or website.

Opera in the Classroom Program

 The Metropolitan Opera has partnered with some school districts around the country to bring their HD Live opera productions into schools. Please check to see if your school district participates, as this brings opera free to students. If your school is not participating, contact the Met to see how you can bring the program to your school.