Music For The Very, Very Young

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the ‘Classical For Everyone’ Podcast…

My name is Peter Cudlipp and this episode is going to be a little different. I’ve been asked to put together a show for very, very young people… and for that the priority will be the music. I’ll do a short introduction for each piece and then at the end of the episode I’ll add some credits. Here we go…

Once upon a time in parks on a sunny Sunday afternoon musicians would gather on a little raised stage and play music written especially for a very young audience… and for the adults they were dragging around with them. And sometimes the musicians would hand out toy instruments to the listeners and ask them to play along. So the music would be called a ‘toy symphony’. And this is the beginning of one of them…

A

In the far away north, a young man enters a cave under a snow-covered mountain and follows a winding pathway down into the darkness and then sees a distant glow and too late discovers he has stumbled into the kingdom of the Trolls… creatures almost like us but sometimes not so very friendly. The noise of the Trolls gets slowly louder and louder until… at the end… he is ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’.

B

If you were a fish you’d enjoy living in a nice big tank called an Aquarium with all your friends feeling the water swishing by and you’d gaze out through the glass and watch the happy faces of the happy children watching you.

 C

It might be a shame these days to put pretty birds into cages so we can hear them sing. But a long time ago people would go out into forests dressed as birds, covered in feathers with a little flute to imitate the songs and calls of birds. And for one particular man this was the happiest of all possible jobs. And even though he is not singing in English you can still hear how happy he is. That’s another thing music can do. You don’t always need to understand the words to get an idea of what is happening. Here is the Birdcatcher.

D

In an old story from Russia every piece of special sweet, of sticky desert, of the very tastiest treat… had a little spirit inside like a very small person… and the one inside the very best of them all was called The Sugar Plum Fairy and when she danced… this is the music she danced to.

 E

Hundreds and hundreds of years ago some of the very first music we know about was made by plucking strings. And in a land called Arabia they made better and better ways to pluck strings and one of  them was the guitar. All over the world now people play the guitar and they play it very, very well in Spain… like this.

F 

One of the things music can do is just make you happy. Sometimes that is all it has to do. But sometimes it can be fun to make pictures in your mind from what the music is doing. And the pictures can be anything you want them to be. And just because this next one makes me think of a party of happy people dancing out in the country; you might think of horses rushing about a meadow… or maybe puppies chasing each other around the house.  

G

Some music is about people marching… a group walking quickly together into something like a circus… lots of colourful costumes, fancy hats. And you’re there watching them all at the beginning of a story wondering what is going to happen next.

H 

And some music can be quieter… like a sleepy summer afternoon and not about people at all. It can be about little pretty things dancing around you. Colourful little paper umbrellas floating over your head, bouncing into each other, falling down and then wafting back up into the sky or up to the ceiling. 

I

 If you think about all the music you’ve listened to today what a lot of it does is try to surprise you. It makes you think it is going to do one thing and then it does something else. It can be like a little bird bouncing along one minute and then a fairy spinning out of a cake, then a troll rumbling through a cave… then some fish racing through the waves… or a big family dancing together out in a field. And I think this last one is the very best combination of music bouncing, laughing and smiling. And if it helps to know it is also about a man who cuts hair for a living… then there you go. I hope you like it. 

J

PAUSE

 This episode was for very, very young people like Umi and Owen and Mikayla and Dolly and Dafne and Pip and Phoebe and Addison and Jules… and for the grown-ups in their world who hit the PLAY button.

And it was especially for Penny and her Mum and Dad. Thank you for suggesting the idea.

If you want to know about the recordings then please visit www.classicalforeveryone.net and there will be a list of who played what but for now, in order, you heard...

Some of Michael Haydn’s Toy Symphony, Edvard Greig’s In the Hall of The Mountain King, ‘Aquarium’ from Camille Saint-Saëns’ Carnival Of The Animals, ‘I’m The Birdcatcher’ from Wolfgang Mozart’s opera ‘The Magic Flute’. Peter Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from his ballet ‘The Nutcracker’; the ending of Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concert for Aranjuez, the beginning of Johann Sebastain Bach’s ‘3^rd Brandenburg Concerto, The prelude to Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen, Elena Kats-Chernin’s ‘The Dance Of The Paper Umbrellas and the overture to Giacchino Rossini’s opera ‘The Barber of Seville’. 

My name is Peter Cudlipp and you have been listening to the ‘Classical for Everyone’ Podcast.

 Thanks for your time and I look forward to playing you some more incredible music on the next ‘Classical For Everyone’.