Classical Music......something you hear every day

...from Sally's Studio

One particularly fun recital theme I have used was based on a book titled “Classical Music for People Who Hate Classical Music”.  Many people don’t even know that they have heard, and have loved, the classics.   

The term “Classical Music” is often used by untrained musicians to describe the more serious music or that of old masters such as Beethoven and Mozart.  In this book, “Classical music” is really a term that refers to music anywhere from the earliest music to that of the contemporary composers.  It helped to make the students more aware of what they are hearing in their daily lives.   

I live in a rural community that amazingly enough has many cultural opportunities.   Within a 35 mile radius, we have opportunity to attend and experience multiple cultural events and performances.  Even with that chance though, I find that much of the public is musically uneducated.  They may enjoy music but it is more the kind of music that we hear on the radio……….pops and country.  They are very surprised to hear that many songs used in cartoons, commercials, and the like, are really portions of famous classics.   When we did this recital, people were saying things like -- "That is the pizza commercial song," or "That one is from Bugs Bunny cartoons"………etc.  We can spark an interest in exploring the classics by doing a recital that uses famous themes.  

Theme and Variations by Haydn was included in one of my recitals. A beginner student played the theme followed by more advanced students doing the variations.   We had two pianos on stage.  When one student was performing the following student was getting ready on the other piano.  We kept the variations going without interruption.   It was a big hit!    I have also had younger students playing an arrangement of one of the classics followed by a more advanced student doing the original version.  It gave the opportunity to show how music can be arranged at different levels.  

I had the students each introduce their own pieces by telling about the composer and something that they really liked about the composition.  Some of the students were reluctant to speak in front of an audience but after doing so, they found that it wasn’t as hard as expected when they prepared in advance.   It was good to have the older students do research on their songs to find out about the selection as well as more about the composer.