STUDENT BOOK COVER

EDUCATION PATRONS ($10,000+)

William C. Etheridge Foundation, Mariam and Robert Hayes Charitable Trust, The McLean Foundation, Wake County

EDUCATION SUSTAINERS ($100,000+)

EDUCATION BENEFACTORS ($50,000+)

EDUCATION PARTNERS ($1,000+)Alamance County, Big Rock Foundation, Cumberland Community Foundation, Dr. Albert Joseph Diab Foundation, The Dickson Foundation,

Edward D. Jones & Co., Encompass Insurance, Enterprise Holdings Foundation, Gipson Family Foundation, Hanover Insurance Group, Kinston Community Council for the Arts, The Kyser Foundation, McGladrey LLP, Mr. and Mrs. W.G. Champion Mitchell, Montgomery Insurance,

Orange County Arts Commission, James J. and Mamie Perkinson Trust, George Smedes Poyner Foundation, Prescott Family Foundation, The Florence Rogers Charitable Trust, The Rolander Family Foundation, Safeco Insurance, Silverback Foundation, The Travelers Companies, Inc.,

WCPE Radio, The Mildred Sheffield Wells Charitable Trust, West Memorial Fund, Youths’ Friends Association

MUSIC EDUCATION ENDOWMENT FUNDSThe Ruby and Raymond A. Bryan Foundation Fund, The Mary Whiting Ewing Charitable Foundation Fund,

The Hulka Ensemble and Chamber Music Programs Fund, The Janirve Foundation Fund, The Ina Mae and Rex G. Powell Wake County Music Education Fund, The Elaine Tayloe Kirkland Fund

Sponsors are current as of June 2012

seating chart

Sections

firstviolins

cellos

violas

basses

oboesflutes

clarinets

Percussion

bassoons

horns

trumpets

trombonestuba

timpanipercussion

secondviolins

conductor

Brass

Woodwind

String

...and you sit here!

These concerts are made possible by a generous grant-in-aid from the State of North Carolina, Honorable Beverly Perdue, Governor; Honorable Linda A. Carlisle, Secretary for Cultural Resources

80th birthday!i t's your orchestra'sThe North Carolina Symphony has performed thousands of concerts for millions of

young people in our state. We even travel thousands of miles each year on a bus

to get to these students. So many people have sat in the same seats that you’re

about to use, and we bet you might know a few of them and not realize it. They

may even be your parents, grandparents, teachers or friends!

This season your North Carolina Symphony turns 80 years old, and we want to celebrate with you. As you read this book, look for the birthday cakes to uncover more fun facts

about the North Carolina Symphony and how your education concert tells

your orchestra’s story.

CARL

Born: June 9, 1865, Sortelung, DenmarkDied: October 3, 1931, Copenhagen, Denmark

INTRODUCTION to the North Carolina Symphony!

...to The

Carl Nielsen was the seventh of twelve children in a fam-

ily so poor, he had to work as a child to help everyone

survive. One day, when he was six years old and stuck

at home, sick with the measles, his mother gave him his

first violin. By the end of the day he had taught himself a few

short melodies, and soon enough, an assistant teacher at his school was encour-

aging him to learn to read and write music. Nielsen was sold. By the time he was

a teenager, he had learned to play trumpet and earned a position in the Sixteenth

Battalion, a military band. That was just the beginning. Nielsen eventually became

Denmark’s greatest composer, as well as a famous violinist, teacher and writer

and the conductor of the country’s Royal Theatre. • You will hear the orchestra

perform the Oriental Festival March from Nielsen’s music for the play Aladdin. This

is “incidental music,” meaning it would be played in the background of the play

to create a particular atmosphere or feeling, just like the music to your favorite

movie today!

Oriental Festival March from Aladdin Suite, Op. 34

For many years, Nielsen’s picture was on the Danish Krone, which is the paper money

used in Denmark.

. . .At age eight, Carl had a job looking after geese.

. . .Carl Nielsen liked to knit.

...the softnessor loudness

of sound

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an ex-

traordinarily gifted musician from the

very beginning. He was writing his own

music by the time he was five, and in just a

few years, was performing in front of kings,

queens, princesses, famous composers and some of the most im-

portant people in Europe. By the time he was eight, he had written

three full Symphonies! Word traveled fast about this new, amazing

prodigy, a name for a child who is better than almost everyone at a

particular task, like writing music or playing the violin. Mozart held

onto this fame for the rest of his life, and he made the most of it,

wearing expensive clothes and spending long nights at parties. Yet

all the while, he wrote some of the most beautiful music the world

has ever known. • Mozart wrote in all of the musical styles popu-

lar in his day, from massive operas for many singers to concertos

that call out a single instrument to symphonies for a full orchestra,

like the music you’ll hear in your concert. Unlike almost any other

composer you can name, Mozart was successful in whatever style

he attempted. He is still remembered and loved as one of music’s

great geniuses.

WOLFGANG AMADEUS

Born: January 27, 1756, Salzburg, AustriaDied: December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria

Mozart had perfect pitch and could hear a note and identify it without having to play it on the keyboard.

. . .As an adult, Mozart enjoyed billiards

and dancing. He also had several pets including a canary, starling,

dog and horse for riding.

. . .Like many men in the 1700s, Mozart

wore a powdered wig. A wig was considered very fashionable,

but it also kept people from having to wash their hair every day and

reduced the spread of lice.

Symphony No. 39 in E-flat Major, K.543, Mvt. I or III

Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 is one of the North Carolina Symphony’s most frequently performed pieces of music for students.

Too poor to care for him,

Claude Debussy’s parents sent

their young son to live with

an aunt, a decision that would

change not just his boyhood, but

his entire life. Debussy’s aunt introduced the young boy

to music through live concerts and piano lessons, and

immediately Debussy was hooked. He was just ten years

old when he entered the Paris Conservatoire, the best

music school in France. Debussy wanted to be a com-

poser, but he disliked his teach-

ers’ many rules for music writ-

ing. Instead, as he grew up, he

searched for a sound that, in his

words, would “please his own

ears.” Along the way, he became friends with painters

and poets like Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

They would all be grouped together as Impressionists, a

term for an artist who was part of a famous and popular

artistic movement, Impressionism, that broke all of the

rules that came before. • At your concert you will hear

“Golliwogg’s Cakewalk” from Debussy’s Children’s Cor-

ner, Suite for Orchestra. Written for Debussy’s daughter,

Claude-Emma, when she was three years old, the Suite

was inspired by the toys in the girl’s closet. When you

hear the Cakewalk, listen for the

dance-like pulse and how the or-

chestra stretches the speed of the

music, just like a dancer in motion.

CLAUDE

Born: August 22, 1862, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, FranceDied: March 25, 1918, Paris, France

a

tostoo

...the speedof the music

...how fast or how slow...

“Golliwogg’s Cakewalk” from Children's Corner, Suite for Orchestra

The first time Debussy’s Children’s Corner, Suite for Orchestra was performed by the North Carolina Symphony for students was in 1949, more than sixty-three years ago. If you had been at that education concert you’d be about 71 years old now.

Most of Debussy’s music was written for solo piano and later

arranged for a full orchestra, including this Suite.

. . .Debussy’s daughter’s nickname

was “Chou-Chou,” which is a term of endearment that means

“favorite” in French.

LR

6

R

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky didn’t

start out as a great musician.

Though he

had played

the piano since

he was four years old, he first stud-

ied law and got a job with the gov-

ernment. His love of music won out,

however, and he was soon back in

school, this time at the famous Saint

Petersburg Conservatory. His compo-

sitions shot him to stardom, especially

for the way they combined classical

music with Russian folk tunes. A rich

widow, Nadezhda von Meck, took

a liking to Tchaikovsky’s music and

offered to pay him a regular salary

so that he could focus on compos-

ing. The pair wrote more than 1,200 letters to each

other but never met, remarkable for a relationship

that produced some of the most

famous music of the past 200 years. •

Tchaikovsky is most often remem-

bered for his ballets, including one

you always hear around the holidays,

The Nutcracker. At your Symphony

concert, you’ll hear a piece from an-

other famous ballet, The Sleeping

Beauty. The music is a waltz, played

when Sleeping Beauty dances at her

birthday party. You may remember it

from Disney’s movie Sleeping Beau-

ty, as “Once Upon a Dream.” Listen

closely to the swaying waltz rhythm

and imagine how Sleeping Beauty

might have danced.

PIOTR ILYICH

Born: May 7, 1840, Votkinsk, RussiaDied: November 6, 1893, Saint Petersburg, Russia

whole note half note quarter note eighth note

… how the sectionsof the music are put together…

its structure...

…a pattern of notes

of varied lengths and accents…the beat or the pulse of the music...

of vaer no

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RondoondnnnnnnnoRoA B A C A B AA CAAAAAA

A B A C A B AA

whole nole note half notehalf quarter nototeq eighth note

A BB A C A B AA

Waltz from The Sleeping Beauty

Tchaikovsky loved nature and one of his favorite

hobbies was searching for wild mushrooms

when out on long walks.

. . .His family was very wealthy. They lived in a large house

with many servants.

. . .He was very orderly and kept to a rigid schedule.

The North Carolina Symphony last performed Tchaikovsky’s Waltz from The Sleeping Beauty for elementary students in 1972. Dr. Benjamin Swalin

was our music director back then, and 1972 was his last year conducting the North Carolina Symphony after

thirty-three years of service. We call Dr. Swalin the father of the North Carolina Symphony because our orchestra grew so much with him as our leader.

L

1

4

L R

R

...the overall sound

...it’s howthe music feels

of the instrumentsthat are playing...

The son of an opera-singing fa-

ther and piano-playing mother,

Igor Stravinsky grew up sur-

rounded by music. Strangely, his

parents didn’t want him to pursue

a career in music. They encouraged him to become a

lawyer, and though Igor loved playing the piano, he

at first honored their wishes. Then his father died,

and Stravinsky changed his plans,

moved to Paris and became a com-

poser. When he was 28 years old,

Stravinsky wrote The Firebird, a

ballet for the famous Ballet Russes

that was so popular, Stravinsky be-

came a celebrity overnight. More

ballets were demanded, and one

of them, The Rite of Spring, was so

new and unusual, members of the first audience that

heard it couldn’t decide if they loved it or hated it. They

argued with each other, and the argument turned

into a riot. The debate about The Rite of Spring

made Stravinsky the world’s most famous living com-

poser. • When you hear the “Dance of the Young

Girls,” one of many dances from Stravinsky’s ballet

The Rite of Spring, think about how the music makes

you feel. Is it rough? Is it smooth?

Are many instruments playing, or

only a few? In The Rite of Spring,

you’ll hear a variety of rhythms and

dissonant sounds, or notes that do

not sound like they are meant to

go together. Think, have you ever

heard anything like it before?

IGOR

Born: June 17, 1882, Oranienbaum (Lomonosov), RussiaDied: April 6, 1971, New York City, New York

“Dance of theYoung Girls” from The Rite of Spring

Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring is twenty years older than the North Carolina Symphony.

The ballet, which premiered in 1913, celebrates its 100th

anniversary this year.

Walt Disney’s Fantasia uses The Rite of Spring as the music depicting animated scenes of

erupting volcanoes, prehistoric forests and dinosaurs.

. . .Stravinsky once wrote a

circus polka for fifty elephants wearing ballet tutus.

. . .In 1962, President John F. Kennedy

honored Igor Stravinsky at the White House on the composer’s 80th birthday.

RICHARD

Born: May 22, 1813, Leipzig, GermanyDied: February 13, 1883, Venice, Italy

Wagner composed the famous wedding song “Here Comes the

Bride” for his 1850 opera Lohengrin.

. . .Wagner designed some new

instruments such as the “Wagner Tuba” and an opera house

especially for his own music.

. . .Wagner’s Ring cycle is a gargantuan

collection of four operas that are all performed separate from

one another. You could almost think of the Ring cycle as being similar

to a movie series, such as Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings,

but with opera instead!

...the last musicyou will hear at a concert......the most dramatic

and exciting...

Like many composers featured in your concert,

Richard Wagner showed an interest in music at

a very young age. He studied piano as a boy and

wrote variations on his favorite composers’ music.

Yet it was opera with which he fell in love, and Wagner,

now considered one of the best opera composers of all time, perfected

many of its most famous musical techniques. For example, he loved the

“leitmotif,” a melody that represents a specific character or idea in an op-

era and is played whenever that subject appears. His works often build to

a conclusion but rarely conclude until the very end, so that tension grows

throughout the entire work. And he also enjoyed length, as many of his op-

eras take several hours to perform! Altogether, these techniques showcase

Wagner’s central belief, that all of the arts – music, dance, visual arts and

theater – could be brought together in one “total artwork.” • In today’s

concert, you will hear the Overture, or the introduction, to one of Wagner’s

first successful operas, Rienzi. Notice how Wagner uses different dynamics,

tempos, rhythms, textures and melodies to make this music more interest-

ing. Every part of Wagner’s music means something. Let the melodies guide

you as you try to imagine the opera’s story just from its music.

Overture to Rienzi

We’re breaking the rules and ending our program with our beginning. Wagner’s Overture to Rienzi was performed at the North Carolina Symphony’s very first concert on May 14, 1932, held in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

We hope you enjoy this exciting conclusion to your concert!

...it’s the main idea of the music...the line that you walk away singing...

We have included a song for you to sing with us at your concert. “North Carolina is My Home”can also be played with instruments, like the recorder. We hope to hear an instrumental group from your school perform this song at your concert before you sing it with the orchestra. For those who will play, here are the instructions:

1 Learn to play “North Carolina is My Home” on an instrument, such as recorder, stringed instrument, bells, xylophone, guitar or other.

2 Memorize the music so you can watch your conductor.

3 Play the song through one time at your North Carolina Symphony concert.

Music by Loonis McGlohon • Words by Charles KuraltNorth Carolina Is My Home””

North Carolina Symphony, 3700 Glenwood Ave., Suite 130, Raleigh, NC 27612 • 919.733.2750 • www.ncsymphony.org/educationprogramsNorth Carolina Symphony Student Handbook © 2012 by North Carolina Symphony Society, Inc. Reproduction of this book in its entirety is strictly prohibited.