Nashville Symphony October YPC

In the upcoming YPC concert "The Magic of Music and Film," students will be exploring tone, instrumentation, genre, character themes, and more. If you go to the Nashville Symphony page you can download a lesson packet with some great resources! 

Character

Leitmotif is a musical term where a musical theme represents a character. 

This video is a perfect example of what we will probably experience in the show at the Nashville Symphony.

Star Wars is also famous for leitmotif. To download the musical notation for Star Wars click here.

You can print or look at the sheet music while listening to the music here:

On the program for the YPC, Imperial March, Luke's Theme, and Leia's Theme will be performed.

Tone

In music, another word for tone is timbre and can be used in a similar way that lietmotif is used. The best example is in the musical story Peter and the Wolf by the composer Prokofiev. 

Walt Disney also created a movie with the story and music that you can search on YouTube. 

Another way to show tone in music is the tonality. Watch the video below to learn more:

A great video to show how happy (major) songs would change the tone and feel if the tonality was switched to sad (minor):

While we are talking about tonality, this video about the scales and chords used in Lord of the Rings is a great watch:

Silent films also used musical choice to support the emotional content of the film:

In the YPC program, I also noticed that Debussy's La Mer will be performed along with Respighi's The Birds. I have a feeling that these will showcase how music can represent something "extra-musical" which is what we call "Program Music" rather than "Absolute Music" (which is just music for music's sake.) To listen to these performances click here for La Mer and here for The Birds.

Florence Price's Dances in the Canebrakes will be performed and has a very happy and lilting feel to the music. Listen to it here! (It reminds me of the music to the movie Up!)

Johann Strauss' Blue Danube Waltz always reminds me of the Loony Tunes cartoon so I wonder if they will show it on the screen? Watch it here!

Instruments

As we saw in the first video, instruments like the celeste give a fairy, bell sound that evoke a magical quality. Or, as in Peter and the Wolf, a flute is a perfect instrument choice for an animal like a bird!

Another way instruments are used in movies are the sound effects! Check out this video for interesting percussion instruments used in Hollywood!

In the YPC program, Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10 will be played and I have a feeling it will be to compare instrumentation of this symphony written in 1953 to the music John Williams scored for movies in the 1970s-1990s. (Especially Star Wars that moves through minor and major tonalities.) Listen to it here.

Rafael Hernandez' El Cumbanchero will also be performed. This is a fun piece with a lot of Latin American percussion! Listen to it here

Bonus

As a bonus, I found this awesome video explaining chord transitions that can be found in many Disney movies from the 90's! Your kids might not be as fascinated by it but I think parents of my generation will love it!

Also, this is a great video about the music in Lord of the Rings!

Thanks for reading this blog! When you attend the concert, prepare the students to see if they can remember what the words "leitmotif," "timbre," "major," and "minor" and "program music" mean. Also, have them recall some of the instruments mentioned in the videos.