Abstract
Photo by Adrienne O’Brien
Is it time to reevaluate the listening experience in our classrooms? Just as we constantly reassess our curricula to address the changes in society and foster in our young people a passion for high-quality music of their own choosing, perhaps now is the time to reinstate and reinforce a time-honored activity: the listening experience.
How should we present music for listening? What music should we choose? These experiences need to be carefully prepared, executed without technology interrupting their flow, and presented in an environment conducive to listening. There needs to be a way for students to respond to what they hear. Time is limited, and there are so many experiences that we want our students to have—all the more reason that music for listening should be carefully chosen and even more carefully presented.
Works that have traditionally been used for such experiences present challenges because of their length. You will recognize them: Carnival of the Animals and “Danse macabre” by Saint-Saëns, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Dukas, Bizet’s Carmen, Beethoven’s Symphony no. 5, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, Haydn’s Surprise Symphony, J. S. Bach’s “Little Fugue in G Minor,” Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” Henry Cowell’s “The Banshee,” and Benjamin Britten’s Young People’s Guide to the Orchestra. I have used these myself.
One of the few artistic formats that continues to propagate and develop the symphonic traditions with considerable creativity (and one that many people can access) is the music in films. There are many wonderful contributions to this genre over the past twenty years that make this music contemporary with your students’ lives. In the past three years, for example, we had Life of Pi, Lincoln, Cloud Atlas, and Ides of March. Two of these soundtracks were recorded by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the MDR Symphony Orchestra and Chorus from Leipzig, Germany. Many film music composers have extensive credentials as musicians, and some of the music is recorded by the great orchestras of the world. The more recent How to Train a Dragon and How to Train a Dragon 2 were recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, as was Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar, which highlights the use of a cathedral organ of the past with futuristic images of outer space phenomena.
As we go to school with Gustav Mahler, Alexandre Desplat, and others, it should be obvious that some of these selections are more appropriate for some age groups than others. Some works are obviously for upper-level students, and many are for beginning listeners, but the teacher can adapt the material to the students’ needs. We are fortunate to live in an age of MP3s and iPods, but all you need really need for fine listening experiences is a good boombox with CD capability.
Before there was film music, there was Gustav Mahler. Since we now find ourselves in a musical society where the Mahler symphonies have become a part of the standard repertoire of our symphony orchestras, even regional orchestras that may have been previously intimidated by their demands, we now find these performances all over the United States. Among the most commonly performed are the third movement of Mahler’s Symphony no. 1, the first movement of his seventh symphony, the first and last movements of Symphony no. 2, and the fourth movement of his Symphony no. 5.
In the early 1970s, a publication called Musical Growth in the Elementary School by Bjornar Bergethon, Eunice Boardman, and Janet Montgomery used the “Frère Jacques” theme from Mahler’s Symphony no. 1, third movement. It was deleted in the fourth edition in 1979. Mahler’s use of minor tonality, a very slow tempo, a repeated ostinato pattern, with an increasingly complex orchestral texture, is fertile ground for an experience touching on many of the musical elements. For upper-grade-level students, it can also serve well for a discussion of the introduction of different instruments. It is easy enough then to move to the Allegretto movement of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 7—most recently used in Alexandre Desplat’s soundtrack to the movie The King’s Speech.
The first movement of Mahler’s Symphony no. 7 illustrates very convincingly that arranger/composer Alexander Courage (Star Trek television series, 1966–69) knew his Mahler—as the trumpet and flute work in measure 297 shows. You will find this section at about 8’:50” to 12’:00” of the 2005 San Francisco Symphony recording by Michael Tilson Thomas. Using this Star Trek connection can lead to a discussion with high school students about borrowing music from other composers, or in the case of Mahler, self-quotation. Understanding how composers borrow from each other helps us illuminate the continuum in musical art. Establishing connections to earlier works by listening to contemporary literature allows students to learn about styles that might not be accessible to them in the original pieces. Not many would suspect that the identification of the Star Trek musical material would take you back to Mahler. In the same manner, composer Hans Zimmer (The Power of One) focused on percussion in a field that has generated in contemporary film music an entire idiom around drumming sounds. His latest effort (The Man of Steel) exploited many aspects of the drum. It should not surprise anyone that Zimmer was profoundly moved by Mahler’s Symphony no. 2 early in his career. Zimmer’s ostinato patterns at the beginning of The Pirates of the Caribbean come directly from the first movement of Mahler’s second symphony, where the original composer used percussion as an exciting musical element.
Alexandre Desplat’s soundtrack for Rise of the Guardians (2012) is a treasure trove of musical ideas from the past. In creating a soundtrack for this animated feature for young people, Desplat tapped into several works. Most people who hear this soundtrack, especially children, will experience it without knowing that they are listening to many composers’ styles, past and present. My ears have detected the following borrowings: Harry Gregson-Williams music for The Bee Movie; Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Firebird; John Williams’s Star Wars and Jurassic Park; Richard Rodgers’s Victory at Sea; and Richard Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration. In addition to all this, Desplat introduces opera singer Renee Fleming performing “Still Dream” recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra. It doesn’t get much better!
Another wonderful soundtrack from Desplat is from the movie Moonrise Kingdom. Here we hear Franz Schubert and Benjamin Britten as well. All the Britten pieces are sung by and for children, from “Old Abram Brown” to Noye’s Fludde [Noah’s Flood]. Musical depictions of thunder, lightning, and rain can be heard in Desplat’s “The Heroic Weather-Conditions of the Universe.” In track 21 of Moonrise Kingdom, a child’s voice leads us through the different sounds that Desplat uses in this piece. This approach is a delightful takeoff on Britten’s Introduction to the Orchestra. In a more serious vein, Desplat interpolates the Adagietto from Mahler’s Symphony no. 5 into “Molly’s Solitude” from the movie Ides of March—again a mash-up of two composers. We as listeners at the movie would probably never catch this slight nuance, but it still begs for a discussion of borrowing music from the masters to create an emotional effect on an audience. This type of listening to details is certainly a value we should encourage in our music students. Not to be ignored for developing musical listening experience is the soundtrack for Walt Disney’s The Odd Life of Timothy Green (2012) by Geoff Zanelli. Because many of your younger students may have seen this film, using this music may be a way to draw on their experiences. It has been my experience that when preparing the students for this type of activity, that they will be seeing a small scene from a movie where the music is very important, it’s helpful to talk to them about what the scene is about and ask them what kind of sounds or music they might think will be used. Play a recording of that particular selection for them and then watch the movie without sound. At the end, have them watch the movie’s scene with the music turned on. In a more creative environment, you can take the time to view a scene from a movie, two minutes perhaps, and have them formulate their own composition for the movie’s scene from whatever sound sources are available. They would perform their piece as a class to the showing of the movie scene. At the end, you show the movie scene with its original movie music.
At the opposite extreme are the soundtrack materials that Martin Scorsese used for his film Shutter Island (2009). Recommended for your high school theory and appreciation class, this compendium of nineteen contemporary works will challenge both you and your students. You can also encourage your students to listen to the film music of Phillip Glass, such as was used in The Illusionist. Both of these are difficult scores, and you may want to use them only for a specialty student who has an open and curious musical mind. I find it significant that Scorsese used these works instead of having a “techno score” composed by one individual. Scorsese has great respect for film music: His early film Taxi Driver (1975) used a score written by Bernard Herrmann that was finished just a day before Herrmann’s death. There are two wonderful recordings of Herrmann’s music for B movies: Fantasy Film World of Bernard Herrmann (1974) and The Mysterious Film World of Bernard Herrmann (1975). These tracks can be easily used to develop listening experiences. Some of the tracks in these recordings include The Crab, The Lizard, Sunrise, The Honey Comb, Radar, and Battle of the Skeletons.
These connections show us that our contemporary film music has direct antecedents in great compositions of the past. Students of any age can come to understand the cross-pollination of not only of the arts but other areas of study and interest as well. We need to make these connections and associations clear to our students—between the ideas of the past and the present. It is only in this way that we can move forward without wasting our time and energy on the question of what to teach.
Recordings for Your Classroom Listening Experiences
Britten/Schubert/Saint-Saens, Alexandre Desplat (2012). Moonrise Kingdom, 1877188922 [Recorded by Va]. ABKCO Music and Records, New York.
Various Composers (2009 R2 522120). Shutter Island: Martin Scorsese [Recorded by Various Ensembles]. Burbank, CA.
Gregson-Williams, Harry. (2005 Walt Disney Records). The Chronicles of Narnia [Recorded by T. B. The Los Angels Recording Arts Orchestra]. Burbank, CA.
Desplat, A. (2007). The Golden Compass [Recorded by The London Voices, The London Oratorio, School Schola]. New York Line Records, New York City.
Desplat, A. (2011 Veresa Sarabande). The Ides of March [Conducted by Alexandre Desplat, The London Symphony Orchestra]. Studio City, CA.
Desplat, A. (2012 Dreamworks). Rise of the Guardians [Recorded by The London Symphony Orchestra, & R. Fleming]. Abbey Road Studios, London, UK.
Desplat A./Beethoven (2010 Decca: Cutting Edge Music). The King’s Speech B0015064-02 [Recorded by Studio Orchestra & The London Symphony Orchestra (Beethoven)]. New York.
Glass, P. The Illusionist [Conducted by Michael Reisman, Czech Film Orchestra]. Prague, Czech Republic.
Herrmann, B. (1996). The Film Scores [Recorded by Essa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra]. New York: Sony Music Entertainment.
Herrmann, B. (1974 Decca ). The Fantasy World of Bernard Herrmann [Recorded by the National Philharmonic Orchestra]. New York.
Herrmann, B. (1975 Decca, (Phase Four). The Mysterious Film World of Bernard Herrmann [Recorded by The National Philharmonic Orchestra]. New York.
Herrmann, B. (1993). From Citizen Kane to Taxi Driver [Recorded by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Elmer Bernstein]. BMG 35643-2.
Mahler, G. (n.d.). Symphony No. 1 in D Major; Symphony No. 2 in C minor; Symphony No. 5 in C# Minor; [Recorded by Various Artists].
Mahler, Gustav. Symphony No. 7 in E minor. San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas,
Tykwer, K. H. (2012). Cloud Atlas [Recorded by Kristian Yarvi and the MDR Sinfoniorchestra & Rundfunkchor]. Burbank, CA.
Zanelli, G. (2012 Walt Disney Records). The Odd Life of Timothy Green [Recorded by Various Artists]. Burbank, CA.
Zimmer, H. (2004–2007). Pirates of the Caribbean (Trilogy) [Recorded by Various Artists]. Walt Disney Studios, Burbank, CA.
Zimmer, H. (2009, Watertower Music). Sherlock Holmes [Recorded by Studio Orchestra, London] Los Angeles, CA.
Zimmer, H. (2013). Man of Steel [Recorded by Various Artists ] 2-CD Deluxe Edition, Burbank, CA.
Zimmer, Hans., Lobo, M., Clegg, J., Karbo. D. (1992, Warner Communications). The Power of One. The Bulawayo Church Choir and Various Artists.
Teaching what is contemporary depends on our knowledge of the past. In arts education, teaching what is current and innovative requires an awareness of what has already been achieved. Linking current film music with the past is one way to show a continuity of expression that illustrates the value that today’s composers place on those who have preceded them. It is our job to plant these musical seeds in our students. It will be their job to nurture them and make them grow and, by doing so, maintain the continuity of our musical culture. This is what we do!
