imagine hearing “hall of the mountian king” for the first time in 1875. the sheer chaos imagine being some norwegian aristocrat and sitting down for a nice day at the symphony and getting your entire wig and life snatched right before your very eyes

i’m just saying grieg went tf off!

Hall of the mountain king is objectively the funniest classical music piece because it’s only ever used to score like Christmas shenanigans

in third grade music class my teacher would play hall of the mountain king on her huge-ass stereo and made us pretend we were sneaking away from goblins or smth so we’d have to tip-toe during the buildup parts and then fall to the floor and lay there during the big percussion parts and she’d be like “uh oh! the goblins are coming! they’re gaining on you! go faster!” as the music sped up and got louder and it was bad enough that one girl repeatedly broke out in tears from the stress but this one time as the song built to a crescendo and we were all tip-toeing and floor-dropping like our lives depended on it the teacher had an eighth-grader come and violently pound on the classroom door during the climax which made the class break out into hysterics and one kid broke his arm in the chaos

I love that piece because it’s the theme music for Alton Towers (a theme park near me aka the best place on earth) so it reminds me of great days out with the family and my friends

:)

ah yes the most obscure of percussion instruments, the square

Quarantine Practise Day 12! . For the second movement of this concerto, especially the part in today’s clip, it’s particularly difficult to play when I don’t know the piano part enough yet to be able to play imagining how it fits, and I won’t be playing accompanied any time in the unforseen future ☹️and since I can’t use my metronome app whilst filming, this clip is admittedly very inconsistent in timing. I also know my interpretation is way off from what I’ll want it to be as well (I look either mad or in pain for most of this 😂), but today I was just trying to work on playing smoothly and accurately, which I’d say is about 65% there - still need to make those top E notes smoother and add more expression up there… . #classicalmusic #musiciansofinstagram #classicalmusician #saxophone #classicalsaxophone #charlotteharding #voyage #viralvoyage #100daysofpractice #sopranosaxophone #hannahandthesaxes #day12

so i decided to make an instagram account to post my concerto challenge! i’ll also try to keep posting here when i can, but please give me a follow on insta!

i’m a queer girl with the vocal range of the average broadway tenor sooooo which one of you beautiful ladies wants to sing musical theatre duets with me and fall hopelessly in love

I know this isn’t nearly as important as the other fundraisers on here, but this would mean so much to me.

Help Kay get to her music competition! Kay is a high school orchestra student, playing both the violin and ukelele. She practices multiple hours a day, auditions for many bands around the area, and is an overall talented musician. However, with financial problems at home, she doesn’t have the money to go on the largest music trip/competition of the year. The first payment is due on October 1st, and is $150 (as opposed to the total cost of the trip, which is $500). Music has really been her outlet these past years, and it would mean a lot for her to be able to compete with the orchestra. Help us reach our goal.

Please share!

imagine hearing “hall of the mountian king” for the first time in 1875. the sheer chaos imagine being some norwegian aristocrat and sitting down for a nice day at the symphony and getting your entire wig and life snatched right before your very eyes

i’m just saying grieg went tf off!

why thank you, my good dude

(C. Alan Publications)

Dances from ‘The Morning of the Year’ by Gustav Holst

arr. Geoffery Brand for Wind Orchestra (Grade 5)

“In 1927 Hoist composed the music for a ‘choral ballet’, […] This interesting project was inspired by Douglas Kennedy, who provided the scenario and also arranged the traditional dances that were performed during the ballet. Hoists friend Steuart Wilson wrote the words for the choral sections of the piece. […] In his notes for a CD that includes The Morning of the Year, as well as The Golden Goose, Raymond Head states that the Scottish composer Granville Bantock was the first to use the term 'choral ballet’, and suggests that there was a conscious attempt on Hoist’s part to link back to the 'Balletts’ of Thomas Weelkes and Thomas Morley, which combined dance and song. The Morning of the Year has the distinction of having been the first piece of music to be commissioned by the music department of the newly formed British Broadcasting Corporation [BBC]. Its first performance was as part of a concert given at the Royal Albert Hall by the National Chorus and Orchestra, which was broadcast live, on the evening of 17 March 1927. It was sandwiched between two pieces by Arthur Honneger and the two composers each conducted their own works. The reviewer for The Times […] wrote, 'about the only thing we can venture to say is that it is full of good tunes treated in the ingenious, reiterative style which the composer has made his own. As The Morning of the Year is really a ballet, and was, of course, given without action, and as the words of the choruses could not be heard from the other end of the Albert Hall, we came away with only a vague notion as to what it was all about, but with the feeling that we should probably enjoy it if it were given with its proper stage accompaniment. The ballet was first performed with its dances at a private concert held at the Royal College of Music on 1 June 1927. The dances were performed by members of the EFDS [English Folk Dance Society] under the leadership of Douglas Kennedy. The Times critic was more impressed by the music than the dances, although he considered the performance of the EFDS dancers to be 'very finished’. He felt, though, that 'before an art-ballet can be created out of our folk dances, a more elaborate technique will have to be evolved’. The Daily Telegraph critic was more enthusiastic, describing the outcome as 'very nearly a perfect art form’, although he did concede that some aspects of the performance needed further work.89 This performance was, in effect, an open dress rehearsal for the public performance at the Scala Theatre later in the month.” (Source)

“The piece was not received well with the critics. The Daily News called the piece, “terribly confused artistically.” Michael Short wrote “the 'Mating Dance’ is too bland and folksy, and lacking in any sexual energy.” Holst was somewhat annoyed by a report which appeared in the press after a concert, and wrote to Percy Pitt: I was sorry to read in the Evening News that I consider the new ballet my best thing since The Planets. I certainly don’t and if I did I would keep it to myself. I did tell one or two men privately that I thought it was the best thing I had written in the last two years which is a very different matter.“” (Source)

This particular arrangement of ‘Dances from The Morning of the Year’ is one I’ve played myself with my university wind orchestra, but failed to find any recording of until I traced the score right back to the website it was purchased off. I thought since I found it quite a challenge to find this arrangement any any information on the piece that I could post some of my findings here for Musicblr. I myself find the piece fascinating, since when I first started rehearsing it I almost disliked the quirk and the many stripped back sections in the music, which is rare for me since I love most wind orchestra repertoire! But as rehearsals went on and I listened to the few orchestral recordings I could find, it grew on me more and more, til I was driven over six months after performing the piece and leaving it behind to go and try to discover more about it. 

it is my professional opinion that teaching young musicians, especially string players, to play mainstream music like rock, pop, musical theatre, country, jazz, and film is just as important as teaching them to play symphonies, concertos, and sonatas. Learning to play a cello arrangement of the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” was just as influential in my musical development as learning a Bach suite.

Jazz teaches improvisation skills, and introduces students to extended chords and harmonies. It also uses swing eighth rhythms, which is challenging to players who are used to straight eights in classical music.

Rock and pop music use lots of syncopation and teaches how to feel the offbeat and how use this feeling to lock-in rhythmically with the other players. These genres also influence the music of musical theatre.

Country has it’s roots in the music of Appalachian fiddle music, which uses techniques that classical violinists don’t use.

Not to mention, the racial disparity between the music of classical Western tradition and popular music from the 20th century makes it blantantly obvious that we’re supposed to believe that European art music is superior to other types of music. How can we fairly say that Bach is one of, if not the greatest composer who ever lived when the likes of Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and even Michael Jackson have all changed the game? Bach’s music all sounds like it wants to sell me the new Nissan Altima, but sure, he’s the musical genius.

I’ve noticed that band programs don’t have this culture of elitism as much as orchestra programs do. Most schools in the US have a marching band program, and the music they play is popular music. the show for this season at my school was Beach Boys, and next year’s is 80s. Band kids also have the option of joining jazz band, and still get to learn classical repertoire in concert band.

Orchestra, on the other hand, has a reputation for being full of pretentious, classically trained since birth, uppity snobs who look down upon music of the masses. The only “real” music is music from dead European guys who lived between 1650-1900. But you know what? The music that got us the most excited and most interested in playing was always arrangements of popular music.

Orchestra kids are so hungry for new and exciting music. I played Mozart’s Symphony 25 every goddamn year in high school. By senior year I could play it memorized. I was so tired of playing the same old shit, and I know kids today are too. We don’t get the same opportunity to be exposed to new music like band kids. I got told that wanting to play musical theatre was “an unrealistic career” and to “not waste my time trying” by my high school orchestra director. He also said that learning to play the Beatles’ on my cello was “not worthy of performance, unprofessional, and a waste of talent.” This kind of condescension of popular music is rampant in orchestra culture.

We need to end this dichotomy between classical music and popular music. both are good, both can teach students the skills they need to be proficient on their instruments. Teaching one without teaching the other does not a well-rounded musician make.

calling british musicblr

hey british music bois, yknow that the government runs this thing called the assisted instrument purchase scheme, the one where you buy an instrument VAT-free if you’re in school/college/whatever? well according to google it works for uni students too and a gal has asked literally EVERYONE and nobody knows who i go to to set the process in motion, don’t suppose anyone on this hellsite knows anything? is it the seller? bc they told me to contact the uni finance ppl and i couldn’t find the right one of them, and no staff in the music dep seem to know anything either 😭 pls help or rb or smth a gal really needs a new sax 😭

props to our wind orchestra conductor for setting us off playing the encore piece in our huge showcase concert concert, then promptly hopping off the podium and wondering off to the percussion section to piss about on the triangle for the rest of the piece

glad to see that grieg and puccini are still relevant