Movie Star Dog meets Wagner

 

How generations of Chinese kids learned western classical music without any hassle.

Is introducing children to opera smug parenting or a valuable cultural eye-opener?

"Is introducing children to opera smug parenting or a valuable cultural eye-opener?" asks Chris Shipman of the Royal Opera House, ahead of a new opera for two to six-year-olds, entitled Dot, Squiggle, and Rest. The toddler-friendly opera will feature puppetry, dance and animation and has been intended as an introduction to the art form. Simple answer: depends on the children, depends on the parents.

There are plenty of smug, self-obssessed and status-mad parents around, who use their children to promote themselves. Kids are not stupid: they pick up on false vibes. Little Ptolemy and Little Drusilda might rebel but chances are that they'll grow up just like their parents, using opera as a consumer product to prove that somehow they're superior to other people. For people like that, opera becomes a weapon with which to beat other people up. Literally as in a recent case. Imagine if the assailant had been an underclass rapper and the victim an opera-going taxi driver?  No, it's not alright. Maybe children of such parents grow up to be successful because they don't let anyone else get in their way.

On the other hand there are a lot of parents who want their kids to grow up to be happy human beings. The arts, and opera in particular, are an ideal way to introduce kids to the world beyond themselves.  Children naturally learn from fantasy, so opera is an extension of story-telling tradition.  Unlike movies, opera is physical theatre, so children learn how magic can be made by overcoming technical challenges. Above all, children can learn to listen to other people's ideas, and develop their own emotional responses. As a culture, I think we are becoming too materialistic and too literal. Most children haven't yet lost that sense of wonder and openness that is the basis of creative imagination. Opera isn't a gateway to "culture", but a way of learning about emotions, relationships and artistic expression.

Many operas are written for children. Some are a lot better than others - as all operas will be. Benjamin Britten, who was a bit of child himself, passionately believed that opera for children could be exciting without being patronizing. A while back, I wrote about the brilliant Noyes Fludde at Blackheath, devised in conjunction with a local school, so the kids became involved at all levels. The children's eyes shone with excitement, their minds clearly active with ideas. A miracle to behold. Then a cynical adult sneered "That wasn't a proper rainbow". The death of imagination is the death of art.

In continental Europe opera for children is a well-developed genre. Zurich Opera does a wonderful Mozart The Magic Flute specially for children (available on DVD) . It's not trivialized. Children can understand the idea of overcoming trials. The Wiener Staatsoper does an even more interesting Wagner Die Feen, which adults can learn from too (See my review here)  A friend's 3 year old so loved the Ceebeebies Prom that he was high for days. My son, aged two, enjoyed Amahl and the Night Visitors so much that he ran out and stood near the stage, transfixed. I didn't stop him. He was as good as gold, taking in every moment. Last year, at Faust  at the Royal Opera House, I sat near a girl aged about 9 or 10.  Obviously a rich little girl, Russian I think, with governess and minder. The little girl watched with avid concentration, leaning forward.  Faust for a child ? Why not? What's so difficult about an old man who sells his soul to be young and happy again?  Gretchen dies, but other fairy tale heroines suffer grim fates, too.  This little girl was clearly entering into the experience and getting much more from it than her attendants. Obviously an intelligent child, not at all someone to be patronized. She'll grow up an interesting person. So, yes, opera for children, but the right children, the right opera and the right motivations.

Read my numerous other posts on children and opera/classical music, such as Will childrren ever learn about operaand End the \Missionary position in classical music

Fiendish Fun Knussen BCMG Aldeburgh

Serious music doesn't need to be dour. Oliver Knussen connducted the BCMG at Snape, Aldeburgh, in a programme that sparkled with wit and whimsy. Really serious composers have nothing to fear from humour.

Britten's The Sword in the Stone (1939) was written for children's radio, when the media took children seroiously enough to give them real music instead of pap. Bright children could get hooked on real music for life. This is so vivid that any imaginative child can visualize the story. It's very superior music for cartoons, which Britten enjoyed.  Trumpet calls  and mock marches describe the young prince.. Rumbling bassoons suggest old Merlin rumbling along trying to keep his dignity. Who else has drawn a sword from a stone (or rather a World Ash Tree? Britten also parodies Siegfried's journey : the wood dove here sounds like a curlew, suggesting that Britten was hinting at thoughts children as sensitive (and odd) as he would have intuited beneath the surface charm.

Hans Werner Henze was fascinated by Britten and by Aldeburgh, so Knussen returns the compliment with Henze's The Emperor's Nightingale ( L'usignolo dell'imperatore) (1959) . Again, the starting point is fairy tale, and the movements describe the different characters. The Nightingale is defined by flute and the mechanical nightingale by piccolo. Marimba, celeste and bass clarinet suggest exotic, diaphanous mysteries. Like the Emperor, the listener is seduced, Gloriously translucent textures, beautifully realized. 

Pierre-Laurent Aimard joined Knussen and the BCMG for Elliott Carter's Dialogues (2003), with which he has been closely associated. Dialogues evolves from a fairly simple cell of patterns but is the basis for a vibrant exchange between piano and orchestra. Sometimes they are in harmony, sometimes they disagree, but it is an engagement. The soloists have “voices” as if they were highly individual characters having an animated discourse. Rhythms and tempi are also in constant flux. The piano attempts to dominate but is knocked back by the others. The cor anglais is particularly droll and a high woodwind screams in short bursts. The piano growls with menace then launches into a very fast, almost manic run, but is stopped in its tracks by an exclamation from a high-pitched piccolo. I though of a cartoon policeman blowing his whistle! 

Carter's Dialogues II (2010) received its UK premiere. In keeping with Carter's "late, late style" it's pared down to essentials. This time, the piano rumbles, like an angry bull poised to charge. The brass is more assertive. Less whimsical and inventive than Dialogues, Dialogues II feels like a rematch where the combatants are having one last bash for old times's sake. t doesn't feel aggressive though. At the end, there's a wonderful extended chord  where the whole ensemble sings in unison and the piece ends, suddenly, with great emphasis. 

Magnus Lindberg has also long been associated with Aldeburgh, so Red House received its premiere with Knussen, an old friend. The piece is panoramic in concept, a "landscape" piece that evokes the spirit of Aldeburgh. The Red House was Britten's home, secluded in woodland but not far from the sea. Broad, sweeping arcs of sound suggest wide, open horizons. The skies over Aldeburgh, the beach and  the ocean, bracing winds, blowing in from Northern Europe : all symbolic of Britten's music. Lindberg also suggests aspects of Britten;s work, from the diaphanous Sea Interludes to the mock-heroics of the Elizabethan works. The piece is very Lindberg, though. I was reminded of his Seht die Sonne from 2007. 

Witold Lutoslawski's Venetian Games (1961) is a mood piece suggesting Venice, its canals and perhaps its relationship wiuth the seas beyond. Knussen's programming is fiendishly erudite and part of the fun of listening to his choices comes from figuring out his "devious games".  Here he connects Lutoslawski to Henze (where the Emperor's Nightingale premiered) and to Britten, who of course was inspired by Venice. It's an early piece, heavily influenced by John Cage's ideas of chance and adventure. Knussen enters aleatoric mode with playful delight.

Faith in Food - Oliver Knussen's Sendak operas, Barbican

The closer you are to your Inner Child, the more you get from Oliver Knussen's Sendak operas, at the Barbican Theatre. Remember being a kid, wide-eyed with wonder listening to crazy stories? Maurice Sendak's stories are surreal: they defy logic. Yet their anarchic mayhem connects to something deep in the psyche. "NO EAT!" screams The Baby in Higgelty Piggelty Pop!, "NO EAT!!!!!". A bundle wrapped in lace asserts its dominance. Nurses who cannot cope get eaten by The Lion. Sendak appeals to kids because he subverts the power structure and releases primal feelings. A man playing a pig hands out ham (!) sandwiches to the real audiences. "Faith in Food" says Jennie the Dog, but faith in fundamental sustenance rather than something handed out free by a stranger. 

Jennie the dog tries to make Baby eat an egg by telling a silly story, just as mothers have done since time immemorial. Baby's not fooled. Just as the Lion is about to swallow them, Jennie finds the courage to stand up for herself. "I want to be in the Mother Goose World Theatre!". It's the Magic Word she thought she didn't know. By confronting her own needs, Jennie is able to break the cycle of silly games. In Castle Yonder, Baby at last grows up, nurtured by emotional fibre, not vanilla pudding.

Although Where the Wild Things Are is by far the best known of Maurice Sendak's stories, and the selling point of the Barbican Knussen Double Bill at the Barbican, it's fairly straightforward, by Sendak and Knussen standards. A kid dresses up as a wolf , releasing his base instincts and gets into trouble. So he runs off to Where the Wild Things Are. The monsters grin and look benign but the kid knows that if he stays, they'll consume him. So home he goes and peace is restored (by the smell of warm food). Strangely enough, my own children were immune to the delights of this Sendak story, while most of their friends wewre transfixed.  I don't know why because they weree addicted to Sendak's In the Night Kitchen, where bakers making the morning bread tumble through the sky and  a child in an aeroplane made of dough saves the day. Maurice Sendak is upstaged in every way by Maurice Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges, a much darker and more sophisticated tale (read more about the Glyndebourne production HERE). Knussen's zany, cheerful music makes his opera fun but doesn't stimulate the deeper levels that are in Higgelty Piggelty Pop!. 

Nonetheless, it's an entertaining experience, and would have been more so had Ryan Wigglesworth kicked more spirit into the Britten Sinfonia. At Aldeburgh, the playing was livelier, laced with manic dementedness, which added spark. (read more here)  At the Barbican they were rather Better Behaved which doesn't work quite so well with subversive music like this. Wigglesworth always looks impeccably immaculate, but he's much more fun when he roughs up. Nonetheless, the children in the evening performance listened avidly, wide-eyed, sitting forward, taking everything in with a sense of wonder. What a pity that a small number of adults behaved like philistines, yawning and sneering loudly. What were they trying to prove? That they were cleverer than kids? At least the kids haven't lost their instinct for magic.

On the other hand, there's a lot in Higgelty Piggelty Pop! that alert adults would get more than kids. The reference to the Mother Goose World Theatre is crucial, for it links to an undercurrent about theatre and illusion. Is opera a grand form of Mother Goose? We all need fantasies to sustain our prosaic lives. That's why we need music and opera or we'd shrivel up and die, emotionally, I think.  This is where  Knussen asserts himself above Sendak. He writes in wry references, like snatches of Mozart, baroque and even Barber Shop. In her despair, Jennie the Dog sings mock-operatic arias of exaggerated desperation. Then the tree sings back to her. It's an ash tree. Knussen sets its words with great portent. The World Ash Tree, like the Mother Goose World Theatre, Jennie the Dog and Sieglinde, both searching for the way out of their dilemmas. 

Are the multiple mock endings a sly reference to the ending of Don Giovanni ? It's also a way of linking "reality" opera to the stylized cardboard theatre games children used to play with long ago. Could it also be typical Oliver Knussen with his fondness for repeats? But could it on the deepest level be like the way adults and children play together? Even small babies like peek-a-boo games where they think something's over and it pops up all over again. Even pre-verbal children instinctively like illusion and role playing. Parents put on funny voices, and make nonsense sounds, playing wth pitch and tempo. They say "Boo!" and the kid bursts out laughing. I imagined Knussen reading Sendak stories to his little daughter, the "Muse of Higgelty Piggelty Pop!" and making her squeal with delight. Children need fantasy if they are to grow up open minded and creative. As do we all.  Deprived of that child-like sense of wonder, we'd be like The Baby screaming "NO EAT!"

photo : Lucy Schaufer as Jennie, credit : Mark Allan, courtesy Barbican Centre. 

Magical Night - Linbury, ROH

"Kurt Weill in a Tutu" I wrote in April, when the Royal Opera House announced the premiere of Weill's Magical Night (Zaubernacht). It's now on at the Linbury Studio. From word of mouth, it's pretty fantastic. Find a kid, or an excuse, to go. My friend took his little daughter who is or was a staunch fan of Lion King. "Much better (than Disney)", she declared. "I want to go TWO times" (kidspeak for "many" times").  She was so thrilled she couldn't stop talking about it and woke the next morning saying she'd dreamed about the Pink Fairy. "Empowering" said her Dad. They immediately re-booked.

So if you want to give a kid a treat they'll never forget, get to Magical Night at the Linbury. Material toys they can get any time, but this is a unique opportunity to get them hooked on the magic of live theatre.

Magical Night is very early Kurt Weill (1922) so isn't typical of his later work. It premiered in Germany in 1922 and had a US production in 1925 but then disappeared. Meirion Brown did a version in 2000 based on the pianos score and contemporary newspaper descriptions. In 2005, the "lost" orchestral parts were fround in a box in the Weill archive.  Since then, there have been two completely different productions, one in April this year in Dessau and this new version at the ROH Linbury. The ROH production is choreographed by Aletta Collins, with an amazing set by Rachael Canning. Giant Robot toys, the Pink Fairy, scary things and real children having fun. It's quite irrelevant to fuss about "period" setting. Children don't really change at heart. If anything, modern kids, bombarded with TV, film and video games, need more than ever to be transported into a "Magical Night" of heightened imagination.  Full review to follow soon in Opera Today.

Gerard McBurney discovers Wagner

Delightful article by Gerard McBurney on how he discovered Wagner when he was a kid - despite parental opposition  Read it here. We all come to things in our own ways. I grew up with Verdi because that's what my father loved. He was put off by Mahler because when he was an undergraduate, Mahler was admired by pretentious fellow students "posing in smoking jackets".

My first experience of Wagner was when I was about 6. A family friend used to play LPs and make me listen and think what the music was trying to say. It's still a good exercise in listening because usually we're taught what to listen to, not how to listen for ourselves. I remember the wildness and the churning movement, people singing in a foreign language. Then he showed me the picture - white people rioting! I was deeply shocked. Only years later did I realize it was a scene from Meistersinger.  So I don't think you can ever introduce kids too young, and you don't need to dumb down. If they're willing, they'll find a way.

The real value of a good music education

What is the real value of music education? Is it to produce robot performers or to produce people who are artists in some less tangible way? Thinking of Orff and Kodaly has made me wonder: why music education, especially in places where there aren't many resources or outlets for formal music making? Being a true artist is more than robot production. A really good basic music education sparks off something deeper in people, so whatever they go on to do in life, it sticks with them in some small way. That's why I think music education is an essential part of the curriculum.

I don't know what system they had in the school I attended.  From kindergarten, we started the day with activity. Moving, clapping, banging triangles and tambourines.  Some of the kids were already getting piano lessons at home, but in school, the emphasis was having fun, not producing music. Mental and emotional stimulation - calisthenics for the soul.

Because this was a good school, there were thousands of applicants for each place. Huge pressure, but pressure can inspire as well as destroy. Everyone knows about the Oxbridge syndrome where students who were top in secondary school suddenly come adrift in a milieu where everyone is mega bright.  Although my school was for the academically gifted, we were instilled from the start with the ethos of "giving". The idea was that the world gave us so much, we would give in return. Lots more fancy terminology possible, but that's what it meant. You are part of society, not out for yourself. So music was part of that process. "Listening to others" as the Orff Schulwerk teacher said.

It used to drive other schools crazy that we won nearly every single prize for singing, reciting and orchestra in every single music festival for more than 60 years. But for us it wasn't competitive, it was fun and emotionally satisfying. "To be the best you can be, whatever you do."

In Chinese society, pressure to strive comes from a historical background. If your children benefit, then suffering can be borne. Even by Chinese standards, Lang Lang was cruelly treated by his father. But he fought back. He's a lot more independent than he gets credit for, which is part of his appeal.  So what if he's not divine musically? He's admired for who he is. I don't have much time for Tiger Mothers who are getting so much attention in the western press, because they operate outside the communal context. It's their spineless husbands who can't stick up for their kids in a different environment.
 
Pressure does not "have" to be negative and joyless. Enjoy this clip of 10, 11 and 12 year olds doing their best and having tremendous fun. The teacher herself grew up in that system. Once she too was little, banging a triangle and having fun.

Kids at the Opera Bayreuth

At Bayreuth this weekend there'll be a special opera movie screened specially for kids. Tannhäuser. Tannhäuser? How to explain Venusberg, and the hero's hots for Venus? Or the pilgrims, guilt and "pure" love for that matter, even to German kids who are more into Bildung than most.

On the other hand, why not? I don't believe opera needs to be taken literally. Kids may not understand everything, but they're smart enough to relate to things on their own terms. That's how the world around appears to them all the time. For most it will just be good guys, bad guys. Though secretly I thought Venusberg sounded more fun.

Kids, or adults for that matter, don't need to feel pressured into understanding everything at once. There's a point at which explaining things veers into telling people "what" to think. Even kids of 9 or 10 can get indoctrinated, so it's a real issue. People used to learn to swim by being thrown in the deep end. Some drowned. But on the other hand, awareness and sensitivity, like swimming, are possibly innate.

Learning to listen, I think, is part of being a whole human being. It's not really so much about learning form as about being open to  feelings and experiences. Kids are often more emotionally literate than adults because they haven't learned what they are "supposed" to think.  Ironically "listening like a child" is much more difficult than people assume  Child-ish and Child-like are completely different concepts. Many adults are more child-ish than children. "Suffer the little children" said Jesus, "Don't stop them coming to me, for theirs is the the kingdom of heaven".

Once I was driving, listening to Die Walküre. Suddenly from the back seat, my kids started cooing with joy. "More! more!" they babbled after the Ride of the Valkyries. They didn't know about Brünnhilde charging through the skies. To them it was just good music.

Hallelujah! Handel Messiah Prom 68

Hallelujah indeed for this magnificent Messiah at the Proms. Everyone has heard the piece before, but this was different. This Prom was the place to be, for the broadcast can't quite capture the atmosphere, or the sense of festive expectation that built up even before the show started.

This Messiah was fun! Because its theme is religious and it's often performed on occasions of civic worthiness, it can be performed in ponderous sobriety. But this performance was electric. Seldom have I heard a choir of this size so lively. It's no mean feat to bring together seven youth choirs and combine them so well that they sounded like they'd been singing together for years. Such precision, such perfect unison - even the entries were perfectly timed. Seeing three hundred singers rise together in an instant, not one lagging, is quite amazing.

What animated these singers ? They sang with such vivacity that they made the piece afresh, as if the story was exciting news, and the music a thing of wonder. Whoever worked out the balances deserves special praise. Every voice is unique, so putting them together to create such fine balance took some doing. The spread across the higher voices was particularly well-judged, creating a nice spectrum, grading smoothly into darker tones. With choirs this size, clarity is more important than usual, because any muddiness can soon end in mush. Not so here, for the singing was so bright and clean. It didn't matter a jot that "All we like Sheep?" comes over as "We like Sheep!" because the real meaning of this oratorio is the miracle of life. Rnthusiasm is quite in order.

Indeed, it was the choirs who made this Messiah such a thrill. Singing is fun, and singing in a group is electrifying. Whatever these kids with shining faces go on to do, they won't forget this moment. Nicholas McGegan and the Northern Sinfonia, and the soloists - big names like John Mark Ainsley, Matthew Rose, Patricia Bardon and Dominique Labelle - were good, but for once took second place to the combined choirs.

This is why it means so much to support the Sing Hallelujah! project. Follow the link and read about it, because it's a wonderful venture. Anyone can participate - sign in on the site. The idea is to get ordinary people all over the country to sing, and moreover to come together. Handel may be the official tag but what's really being celebrated is the joy of being alive. Singing is an energizing physical activity, and communal singing charges emotional batteries. The BBC and the ENO may be behind this, but frankly, it's something the NHS should be supporting too, for its long term benefits.

Programmes like Songs of Praise aim at a special interest market, but singing can reach out to many more people. That's why I'm going to listen to The Choir when it starts again on BBC Radio 3 on 20th September. With Aled Jones as presenter it extends the concept of choral singing further so it reaches and benefits a much wider community. There is a great deal of interesting choral music beyond the niche. In Europe, choral music has enjoyed a renaissance for some time, withh exciting new choirs like Accentus, and composers like Carl Orff and Clytus Gottwald. Last year The Choir featured the work of Zoltan Kodaly, both as composer and as teacher. Programmes like this are needed more than ever because they bring communal singing into the mainstream for all, where it deserves to be.

Naturally the Hallelujah Chorus will be the centrepiece of the communal singing projects all over the country, for it's a song everyone knows and there aren't many words to memorize! But that's why it's a good starting point : it raises the spirits for more. There's advice online for organizing local groups. In Glasgow and London on the weekend 5/6 December there will be special "learning events". The ENO is presenting The Messiah from November in a staging by Deborah Warner. The cultural Taleban may sneer, but quite frankly, music is born again on performance, so I'm perfectly happy to give it a chance. From all we know, Handel wasn't a po-faced autodictat. Chances are he would have been thrilled to hear how his music has adapted to serve communities more diverse and wider than he could ever have imagined.

Lots more on Handel and the Messiah and singing on this blog - use search widget on right or labels.Updated Prom 65 review Mahler and Ligeti Strauss Nott HERE

Dinosaurs R Us! Darwin Prom music for kids

Massive dinosaur heads, audience participation, funny instruments, loud noises! Just as museums don't do stuffed dinosaurs anymore, neither do the Proms do stuffy music. Before Prom 21 and 23 the audience was rehearsed, sort of, in something called The Big Bang. Great idea because it helped the audience – mostly kids and carers – appreciate that music is a living thing people create. It's not something fossilized behind glass. The music was actually quite fun. The Big Bang Theory demonstrated, reproduced like an experiment, live, in a lab, as proof of concept.

Programming was adventurous too. Jon Lief's Hekla, no less, billed as the "loudest music ever written". Liefs was trying to evoke the spirit of his native Iceland, with its volcanos and primeval legends. Pretty good for a Prom at any time, not just a Prom for kids. And he's modern, too. Howling babies added to the effect. Not so good for the mums, but good for the experience.

The rest of the programme was straightforward – Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, Delius On hearing the first cuckoo of Spring. There's plenty of inspiring music if you take the Darwin theme as meaning the wonders of Nature. So why soundtracks from movies adults may have seen but which happened before most of this audience was born? In blockbusters like Jurassic Park, music is just a means to an end, which is to suck the audience into the film. You aren't supposed to be listening, just picking up clues. Grumbling roars = the dinosaurs are coming! Without the film, the music is pointless. It's a bit like watching a washing machine instead of TV.

As David Attenborough said, we don't know what dinosaurs sounded like, what their skins, colours and social habits really were. That's WHY science is such an adventure. It's about finding things out, not trotting out the same old assumptions. The spirit of science and the spirit of creative art are one and the same thing. Though I didn't get round to hearing the piece by Goldie, a "new music" composer in the sense that he didn't used to do classical, in principle, the fact that he does what he did is a good thing. It's the sense of wonder, and adventure, that makes science - and music - fun.

Attenborough was brilliant. Even though he only appeared for a few minutes, in that short span, he said more in those moments than the presenters probably say in weeks. Attenborough shows that it's not necessary to dumb down for kids. All he does is know his stuff and be enthusiastic about it. That's why he's fascinating, even to people 3 foot high with limited verbal skills. He makes you want to know what makes things so much fun for him.

In contrast, TV presenting for children these days seems geared to making them as cynical and blasé as possible, to instil in them the idea that any kind of mental effort is a kind of crime. A miasma of anti-learning banality hangs over children's TV like a gas cloud over a swamp. Any kid who might want to stand up and breathe must struggle past the blanket of put-down. And it's not just kids' TV. One of the BBC's greatest creations was Blue Peter, a show where kids most certainly were expected to think and act for themselves. Naff as it may seem today, it was a different approach to the business of growing up. Kids are born with a sense of wonder, til it gets squashed out of them by life. Nowadays, people don't "grow up", so it's a concept as dead as the dodo.

Roger Bobo Plays the Tuba

Roger Bobo is a real tuba player but Roger Bobo Plays the Tuba isn't about him so much as about the joy of making music and having fun. The words are by John Updike, celebrating Bobo's mellifluous name. The music is by Brian Holmes, celebrating Bobo's mellifluous instrument. The combination is a riot ! The body movements are central to the music, too, because instruments are played with physical force. Not disembodied, so to speak. No lungs, no sound. Stockhausen did the same thing in KLANG! but Bobo is more lively.

Roger Bobo Plays the Tuba should be heard more often, as it's ideal material for getting people enthusiastic. It doesn't require gargantuan forces - just three part female choir, piano and tuba solo. The vocal parts are fun rather than taxing - well within the range of good amateurs. It's published by Roger Dean and also available from sheetmusicplus.

Brian Holmes is a horn player himself, so he understands the tuba well, and what performance can be. He's also a physics professor, and understands the science that makes instruments do what they do. This is a very unusual combination of skills, and makes you think about what the instruments are capable of. He's also a born communicator. He teaches college level, but he also gives direct, vivid talks on music making, and the science of music, intelligible to ordinary people. His music has long appealed to me, because he mixes whimsy with intelligence. His Science Songs (soprano and piano), also set to Updike texts , are very good indeed - song recitalists take note! They are great fun in performance. These are also published by Roger Dean. More recently, Holmes has completed an ambitious piece, The Amherst Requiem, for choir, soloist and orchestra to texts by Emily Dickinson. It fits well with the clear, natural spirit of her poems.

Below is another performance of Roger Bobo Plays The Tuba. This time the choir is more formally dressed as they do in the US, but the effervescence can't be suppressed!

Mr Beethoven lives upstairs

"There's a madman upstairs!" says a young lad writing to his uncle about a nutcase neighbour who makes a lot of noise."Send Mr Beethoven away, I beg you !" cries the boy. It's a little Freudian considering that Beethoven's own nephew felt exactly the same way.

Long before the advent of DVD, or even CDs, there was a series of cassettes and LP's for kids by Ann Rachlin, called "Fun with Music". Highly recommended as the series was not in the least dumbed down. Each piece is well written, and has something intelligent to say, even if you aren't six anymore. Better than many programme notes these days ! Or the awful Naxos "composer books" series. Rachlin did a "Happy Birthday Mr Beethoven" which was pretty much on the same lines as the DVD - Beethoven seen thru a kid's perspective. "Did you know that Beethoven's favourite food was macaroni cheese? Or that he took a shower standing in a bowl, throwing water all over himself - and the floor?" It's documented too, though you might not read that in Grove. Rachlin's series are still available, so check out the website if you know any kids. Bookmark it for birthdays and Xmas !

My favourite in the series was the one about Mozart's childhood, Mozart the Miracle Maestro, very well researched, but presented in such a way that kids become fascinated with the 18th century. "A small boy who hated sloppy kisses!...A miracle in a cathedral in Rome!...The mystery of the Dark Stranger...Wolfgang's journey through Europe with his sister". In fact, and this is a TRUE STORY, one five year old, visiting Mozart's birthplace in Salzburg, piped up, "that's Mozart's sister!" looking at her portrait. She'd recognized the picture from a children's book and knew the story from Ann Rachlin.

And there are excellent ones on Handel and Haydn, indeed, two on Handel, which should be required listening for people who don't get the baroque. Rachlin's Handel's Firework Party resonates with kids who know London. It is a godsend if you get stuck with kids in the car in Central London traffic. "Fireworks that backfire...Traffic jams in 1749...Sword fights on London Bridge...Road rage in horse-drawn carriages." One minute the kid is having a tantrum, the next it's transfixed by proper music, not pap. The performances are pretty good, LSO, Mackerras etc. Again, Naxos pabulum it ain't.

Google Ann Rachlin for details. The series also includes ballets and orchestras and "stories" like Lt. Kije. Extremely good introduction to music even if you're not a kid.