Music - MYP 4 and 5 - Samuel Wright - Hodder 2020

A STORY THROUGH
TELLING
MUSIC
THE COMPOSER:
MEET
MCCREARY
BEAR
2 Does music have a story to tell? 35
Figure 2.7 ‘ (traditional Scottish)
Skye-Boat Song’
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Based upon the traditional Scottish ‘Skye-Boat Song’,
composer Bear McCreary created several versions
of it for the TV series of
The show told
Outlander .
the tale of a heroine that is thrown backwards in
time. Throughout each incarnation of the story,
McCreary uses the setting of the characters to change
the arrangement of the tune from Scotland, to the
Caribbean to Appalachia. As you listen to each version,
Figure 2.6 ■
identify how he uses both the melody and rhythm to
help the audience interpret their surroundings.
Whether it is ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, ‘The Jabberwocky’
or ‘The Fox and the Crow’, fables have been transformed
time and time again, often with different media and each
EXTENSION
time adding more detail. When music is added, we tend to
performance: Major
Ensemble
minor to
interpret the emotion and dramatic associations of the story,
poem or painting more holistically. In the 19th Century
tone symphonic
or
Most children sing the folktune ‘Brother Jakob’
musical tradition, these were called
or ‘Frère Jacques’ in the playground or primary
poems. Many composers, from Dvorak to Ravel and later
Prokofiev or Strauss, composed for fairytales, fables and
classroom. But have you heard what composer
Gustav Mahler did to it? By shifting the entire
legends. We also have what is known as programmatic
music, which seeks to accomplish the same goals, often
tune down 3 steps, Mahler takes what was once
a major-sounding melody and transforms it into
with a printed narrative for the audience.
for his
chant
a minor-sounding (and quite eerie)
Composer Maurice Ravel wrote a fantasy for children
first Symphony. Listen to the work in the playlist
(‘Mother
Ma mère l’Oye
between 1908 and 1911 entitled
and then as a class sing the minor version as a
Goose’). This fantasy was actually a
that included five
suite
. round
four-part
‘Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty’, ‘Tom Thumb’,
1 2
works:
4
‘Laideronette, Empress of the Pagodas’,
3
‘Conversation
of Beauty and the Beast’ and
5
‘The Fairy Garden’, a tale
of Ravel’s own imagination. Each setting of these has no
voice-over-style narration; instead, the listener interprets the
tale from the way the music has been written. Ravel has
Figure 2.8 Minor ‘Frère Jacques’ parts 1 and 2.
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you work out the rest?
Can
beautifully captured each story, and we will explore ways of
doing this ourselves.