For Young Narrator and Orchestra, Text by Paul Thompson (2003)

In the spring of 2003, Sara Edgerton, director of the Southeast Missouri Symphony, asked me to write a piece for a children's concert she was planning for the following fall. She wanted something that would introduce the instruments of the orchestra to the children, but at the same time, would not be too technically taxing for the orchestra. I asked Paul Thompson to write a text that would introduce the instruments in a quasi-historical context. With this text in hand, I began the piece in the summer of 2003.

In my younger days I performed in quite a few children's concerts and when asked to demonstrate my instrument I would play a brief orchestral except. For What's an Orchestra? I chose a different orchestral excerpt for each instrument. Most are humorous or somewhat inappropriate in some way. For example, the "primitive" percussion section plays an elegant Strauss waltz, the bassoon plays a melody from the Elgar cello concerto, and so on. In this way the piece would be fun for the musicians (and adults in the audience who knew the excerpts) without spoiling the educational benefit for the children. In addition to introducing each excerpt separately, I reworked many of them so that they could be played together in a kind of grand quodlibet.

Paul Thompson intentionally kept the narration simple so that it could not only be understood by children but also so that it could be performed by a child. By having a child read the narration, we hoped to engage the children's attention more than if we had employed an adult.
 
 
 
 

Last revision 7/2/2004. This page is maintained by Robert Fruehwald (rfruehwald@semovm.semo.edu).

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