Why do we sing to babies? To calm them, obviously — but there may be additional benefits that helped humans win the wars of natural selection, two Harvard scholars argue in a new paper published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.
Lullabies aren't just for fussy babies, argue Samuel Mehr and Max Krasnow. Yes, they certainly do have a calming result, which in primitive times might have been important to avoid attracting predators as well as to get infants to sleep. Mehr (a graduate student in education) and Krasnow (a psychologist) believe that singing to children could have helped to hold their attention so as to keep them from wandering off or doing other dangerous things.
"Particularly in an ancestral world, where there are predators and other people that pose a risk, and infants don't know which foods are poisonous and what activities are hazardous, an infant can be kept safe by an attentive parent," Krasnow told the Harvard Gazette. "But attention is a limited resource."
Mehr and Krasnow also point out that children have evolutionary reasons to attract and hold their parents' attention, and that a parent singing assures young ones they're being attended to.
There's even a bigger implication of the new theory, though: it might explain the reason that humans are the only musical species. Evolutionary biologists have long struggled to come up with a satisfactory explanation as to why music is so universal among human societies. If Mehr and Krasnow are right about lullabies, it might be that all other music derived from baby song.
"In the past, people have been so eager to come up with an adaptive explanation for music that they have advanced glib and circular theories, such as that music evolved to bond the group," famed evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker told the Gazette. "This is the first explanation that at least makes evolutionary sense — it shows how the features of music could cause an advantage in fitness. That by itself doesn't prove that it's true, but at least it makes sense!"
Even at this late stage in the evolutionary game, babies — and grown-ups — still love gentle, lilting music. Get your fix any time, anywhere with YourClassical's Sleep stream.
]]>The Choral Scholars of University College Dublin performs a gorgeous Irish lullaby that dates from 1904.
"The Gartan Mother's Lullaby" was included in an early-20th-century collection of ballads collected in northern Ireland. The song's lyrics make reference to fairies and Gaelic mythology.
Hear the song below, accompanied by a charming stop-motion video. If it puts you in the mood for more music like it, click on YourClassical's Lullabies stream.
]]>In 2012, Carnegie Hall launched a "Lullaby Project" to help young mothers write lullabies for their babies. Five years later, the project is spreading across the country.
The project began at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx. "Young, expectant mothers were under tremendous stress and needed to be motivated to attend their medical appointments," the New York Times explained. "They needed a sense of community, and they needed ways to understand the reality of what was happening to them."
As part of their regular wellness visits, the young mothers worked with composer Thomas Cabaniss to write and record original lullabies for their babies. The program operated under the auspices of Carnegie Hall's Musical Connections, which still runs the Lullaby Project as it spreads nationally.
Minneapolis is among several cities that have hosted Lullaby Project satellite programs. This year, the choir VocalEssence worked with four teen mothers at Longfellow Alternative High School: the moms wrote the songs, and VocalEssence staff helped out with the harmonies.
"We ain't writing your song. We ain't writing about your life," said composer Melanie DeMore, as reported by the Star Tribune. "It's your life. It's your song.nAnd our job is to help you figure out how to sing it in the best, sweetest way."
At the Rikers Island prison, Lullaby Project musicians worked with inmates who are mothers. "When it comes to our children and stuff," said one mother, according to NPR, "it brings out the best in us. You know, we all became songwriters for them, right?"
]]>Can you imagine Christmas without music? No singing, no jingling. Only Scrooge would be happy with that!
Part of the fun of the holidays is hearing things that are only played at Christmas and no other time of year — carols that make you think of the food, or snow, or sleigh bells. The My First Christmas Album compilation collects some of the most popular carols, as well as some other surprises, packaged with a colorful booklet designed for young children.
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]]>There's a lot of hate on the internet — but there's a lot of love, too, as one dad discovered when Reddit users helped him recover some songs recorded by his late wife.
Jared Buhanan-Decker, of Utah, lost his wife this year when she died of a rare medical condition during the birth of the couple's son J.J.
Sharry Buhanan-Decker was a singer who wrote and recorded songs throughout her life. After her death, her husband found six songs left by Sharry — including a recording of a lullaby for her son. The problem: the songs were recorded on Pro Tools, a piece of software Jared didn't have access to.
How to get the music? Jared turned to Reddit, where users not only helped him access his wife's tracks, they helped him mix the tracks and add accompaniment. Now, J.J. often rocks to sleep to the sound of his mother's voice.
"Baby don't you worry 'bout me," sings Sharry. "I'll be okay."
You can read more about the Buhanan-Deckers' journey at their blog.
]]>Vin Scully is a legend of baseball broadcasting, after 67 years covering the Los Angeles Dodgers — the longest any broadcaster has ever been with a single team.
The fact that Scully is soon to retire adds special poignance to anything he says on air this season, so Dodgers fans loved it when Scully fell for a little baby who appeared in a cutaway shot during a recent game. Adopting a lilting voice, Scully seemed as if he was almost trying to sing the youngster to sleep.
Scully called the incipient nap almost like a baseball play. "Dad's doing his duty! He's got a wide-eyed beauty. Trying to put the baby to sleep...he's gaining on it! The sandman is coming, the sandman is...no, you don't want to go to sleep."
If Vin Scully isn't available next time your little one needs to nod off, try YourClassical's Lullabies stream.
]]>After searching for clues and for Wi-Fi, I finally found the piano song I first heard as a seven-year-old performing in The Little Prince. For a second, I was no longer in Paris's 8th arrondissement, but backstage in my St. Paul elementary school gym as the song led us through a scene change.
It was everything I remembered, with simple, soft opening keys answered back by restless loud ones. I had forgotten just how angry the answering notes were. In my memory, the song had lost its rhythm and played however I wanted it to. I was delighted to learn that it was meant to be like that, having been written in free time without a time signature.
Who wrote it? Erik Satie. The title of the piece: Gnossienne No. 1. Born on May 17, 1866, the French composer would have turned 150 years old just last month. Satie lived in Montmartre in his early 20s, going to the neighborhood's cafes and making friends with the likes of Claude Debussy. Then Parisian life became too expensive. He moved a few kilometers away to Arcueil, France, where he lived for the rest of his life.
I grabbed my metro map. I knew it could be the only time in my life when I can read about a composer who lived in a Paris suburb and then be able to walk outside, hop on a train, and be there in 30 minutes — so I did just that. Umbrella and earbuds in hand, I took the RER B south to Arcueil. I scaled the sloping streets and found Rue Erik Satie, a tiny street hedged by gray apartment buildings. The neighborhood was all concrete and asphalt. After playing at cabarets, the composer would walk the long way back to the industrial suburb with a hammer in his pocket for protection.
Irritable and intriguing, Satie wore the same gray velvet suits for decades, created a church of which he was the only member, and ate exclusively white foods. He found a following later in life, playing a role in Paris's avant-garde scene and collaborating with Pablo Picasso. He had only one romantic relationship, with artist Suzanne Valadon. In Arcueil, he took no visitors. When his friends opened up his room after his death, the place was filthy and full of little other than papers and junk.
The composer might not have led a cozy life in Arcueil, but the town preserves his presence. I stumbled on a square called Place des Musiciens, which lists his name on a wall. Walking up a hill, I found Parc Eric Satie, an oval green space with a soccer court and a pigeon house. A blue banner hung from a building advertising his recent birthday celebration, quoting his well-known words: "Si vous voulez vivre longtemps, vivez vieux (If you want to live long, live old)."
With Satie's notes no longer just in my head, but in my ears, I realized that the music has stayed in my memory far longer than any line of dialogue I had been relieved to remember at the time.
Music lasts, just like relics of a kooky composer in a town I otherwise never would have visited. I owe my drama teacher a thank you.
Hailey Colwell is a St.-Paul-bred writer and recent University of Minnesota graduate who is currently living in Paris. You can read about her experiences as a Minnesotan in Paris on her blog, Des Mots du Monde.
When I was seven years old, I acted in my first play — in my elementary school gymnasium. The Little Prince was based on the book by the famous French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, but I did not know that, nor did I care. What I cared about was remembering my lines and the dreamy piano music that played throughout the show.
The music transformed the production. Parents cried at the end of it — maybe from seeing their kids perform, or maybe from seeing the kindergarten teacher everyone loved break down as the pilot said goodbye to the prince. I think it was a combination of both, but without the music, the faces would have stayed dry.
Now, 15 years later, the music still haunts me and I still do not know anything about it. I currently live in Saint-Exupéry's country: I'm working as a nanny in Paris, where I babysit a French girl who just turned seven. When I was her age, music just...existed. I grew up thinking the song was unattached to any names; just a beautiful array of sounds my drama teacher had chosen from a box of CDs.
Then one evening, as the little girl's bath filled up and I re-heated a quiche for dinner, familiar notes came floating through the walls of her family's Haussmann-style apartment. A neighbor sat at a piano, playing the piece that normally just played in my head. I wanted to run down the stairs and knock on the musician's door and ask in my shaky French who wrote the song.
Instead, I just stood there. Two thoughts crept into my mind. One: I had to finish making dinner. Two: It was time for me to find out the name of this song.
The search began late at night after babysitting. I opened my laptop and caught the family's weak Wi-Fi signal, searching classical music websites and YouTube for piano playlists. Looking for good Internet and new leads, I went across the street to Parc Monceau and sat listening on the grass one Saturday afternoon. (Yes, Paris's parks have Wi-Fi.) Still empty-handed, I went to a used CD store. I found a classical piano album and snapped a picture of the back cover. Searching the songs on my computer, I got a sampler course on Chopin, Liszt and Schumann, but did not find what I was looking for.
Then one Sunday, window open to the rain, door open to the stairwell to catch that signal, I tried again. I turned to Spotify because I thought its playlists might get me into deeper territory than YouTube videos like, "This Song will make you cry, i promise it will!"
I had started to doubt the song even existed. What was my neighbor playing through the walls, then? Was I hearing things? Maybe, at 22 years old, I was losing my mind.
Then I skipped to a new song, and with the first few notes, I knew I had found it.
keep reading
Hailey Colwell is a St.-Paul-bred writer and recent University of Minnesota graduate who is currently living in Paris. You can read about her experiences as a Minnesotan in Paris on her blog, Des Mots du Monde.
We know humans love lullabies — that's why YourClassical offers a Lullaby stream, for relaxation 24/7 — but it turns out that elephants like them too.
In a video shared by the Save Elephant Foundation, Thai zookeeper Lek Chailert serenades an elephant named Faamai — then lies down with the giant animal as she drifts off to sleep.
"Sometimes when we want to make our baby relax and feel safe when they sleep, they need not just only a lullaby, but they want us to be next to them to comfort them and make them feel safe," writes Chailert on Facebook. "Not just only human babies need that. Elephant[s] want that part too."
In the 1993 Super Nintendo game Secret of Mana, players have at it with axes, spears, whips, swords, and even javelins. It sounds like the stuff of nightmares, not sweet dreams — but wait until you hear the music as reinterpreted by a duo known as Gentle Love.
Gentle Love is video game composer Norihiko Hibino and pianist AYAKI. Hibino has written music for several video games, most prominently for the Metal Gear Solid series. On the side, he collaborates with AYAKI to create lullaby music from video game scores such as those for the Final Fantasy series.
Lullabies of Mana features Gentle Love's take on the music originally composed by Hiroki Kikuta. Pushing the possibilities of the 16-bit system, Kikuta wrote music described by one reviewer as including "Debussian impressionist styles, his own heavy electronic and synth ideas, and even ideas of popular musicians (such as the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and even Queen)."
That's a lot to process when you're just trying to nod off, but Gentle Love make it all sound supremely serene.
Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was moved to tears during an interview in which he recalled a Ngunnawal lullaby while discussing the country's Indigenous Affairs policy.
Speaking with NITV, Turnbull recalled being shown a lullaby in the Ngunnawal language while he was researching an annual speech on inequality in Australia. The song was described to the prime minister by an elderly woman who was from the Stolen Generations: cohorts of Aboriginal children who were taken from their families as part of a forced assimilation process into white Australian society.
"The thing that's so sad," said Turnbull, choking up, "is to imagine that mother singing that story to her at a time when you were losing culture and the last thing that baby was, was safe."
Turnbull is calling on his government colleagues to adopt policies designed to close the significant gaps remaining between Native and other Australians in health, education, and incarceration.
Brahms's lullaby is one of the most iconic pieces of music in the entire classical canon. You've probably heard it a million times — but you probably also don't know the heartbreaking true story behind its composition. In a nifty, poignant new video, the Canadian Broadcasting Company shares that story.
Do lullabies work? Here's proof positive: when Salt Lake City dad David Motola played Brahms's iconic lullaby for his five-month-old son, despite the fact that young Samuel had an uncomfortable ear infection, the baby fell straight to sleep.
"I created the arrangement on the spot, adding my own melodies into the original lullaby," Motola told TODAY Parents. "I can't read sheet music and I play by ear, so I just played what was in my heart."
Since the video has gone viral (it's been viewed millions of times on Facebook), Motola has released his version of the piece as a single — with all proceeds being put aside in a college fund for Samuel and his brothers.
All parents enjoy singing to their babies — but in the U.K., moms (or "mums," in British parlance) are getting organized and forming babes-in-arms choirs.
Helen Yeomans, a composer and choir director, first started organizing "Thula Mama" choirs several years ago when her third child was born. Yeomans decided to try some organized lullaby singing, and started a singing group for mothers and babies that still meets in her living room every Tuesday morning.
With Yeomans writing original music for the mums, they went public in what has become a big way. The 11th Thula Mama choir (named after a South African lullaby) just made its debut in Devon; the choirs have been heard on the BBC and have released three albums.
Thula Mama's website features a complete list of the lullaby groups (so far, they're all in the U.K.) and information about starting your own.
I'm not the only one who remembers my first time hearing Peter and the Wolf. My music teacher cued up the CD player, a picture book on her knee. My classmates and I prepared our ears for our assignment: to identify the instruments that represented the animals Peter meets. This was in 2003 or so, just before computers became a household fixture and long before we dreamed of having an iPad or a smartphone. Just listening to the CD and watching the pages turn was plenty to spark our imaginations.
Alice Cooper's first Peter and the Wolf memory involves a vinyl record in the mid-1950s: "I first heard this back in Detroit, when I was six or seven years old. My mom put the record on and I was instantly transported to another world," the theatrical rock musician said in a news release.
Deutsche Grammophon and production company Giants Are Small recently released Peter and the Wolf in Hollywood as a digital album, an iPad application, and a CD.
In this new take on the 1936 children's classic, we meet Peter in present-day Los Angeles after he has moved there from Russia. In a new city full of paparazzi but empty of friends, Peter tries to capture a wolf that escaped from the city zoo in hopes that it will make the kids at school like him.
The score has been spliced and diced for the updated version. Before Sergei Prokofiev's music kicks in, we hear snippets from pieces by the likes of Wagner and Grieg. Then, the story takes hold.
The accompanying iPad app takes children through the tale with hand-drawn scenes and interactive games, but the Youth Orchestra of Germany's recording — made under the baton of Alexander Shelley — remains the focus.
"I love the fact that it's moved on," Cooper said in a statement released to press. He joins David Bowie and Sting on the growing list of rock musicians who have narrated Peter albums. "I'm just wondering 50 years from now where it'll go," he said. "Are they transporting him from Russia to Los Angeles in a machine? Is the wolf actually a projection?"
Not everyone is jazzed about the techy new take. Critic Jeff Simon writes that the composer "is probably whirling in his grave like a DC-10 propeller at what Alice Cooper and friends have done to Peter and the Wolf."
Alison Crutchley, on the other hand, maintains that the app could make this music more accessible for children. After testing it with her 7- and 10-year-old boys, she wrote, "they know a bit of classical...but I don't think they see it as different from Frozen, or Pharrell Williams, or the music for TV shows. And that may be the brilliant thing about apps like this: repeated plays will see the music going in, regardless. They were singing In the Hall Of The Mountain King at breakfast today; I'm expecting Prokofiev to find his way into their repertoire soon."
The way children are introduced to classical music will always be changing. How will my future kids encounter Peter? Chances are, it's out of my imagination's league — but most likely, it will be as natural to them as it was for Cooper to hear it on vinyl.
Hailey Colwell is a St.-Paul-bred writer and recent University of Minnesota graduate who is currently living in Paris. You can read about her experiences as a Minnesotan in Paris on her blog, Des Mots du Monde.
The tongue-in-cheek duo behind the YouTube channel MelodicaNow devote most of their attention to the eponymous keyboard instrument. They also, however, have a flair for demonstrating the absurdity of certain creative musical arrangements.
For example, here's what Brahms's immortal lullaby sounds like when accompanied by a (relatively) gentle snare drum.
If you get a kick out of that, you can also check out the duo's videos featuring tambourine and — seasonally, if not musically, appropriate — sleigh bells.
If you're the parent of a baby, chances are you've already taken approximately 4,987,234 photos of your little one — and you're really happy with maybe two or three of them. Whether you're trying to take a photo for a holiday card or just grabbing a pic to post in your family Facebook group, a few simple tricks will help you get better results.
Use natural light
Hands-down, the easiest way to dramatically improve your photos is to place your baby by a window during daylight — ideally when there's not direct sunlight pouring in the window, but lots of indirect light. This way you'll get sharper photos, with even light and without a harsh flash.
Wait for the right moment
It's a recipe for disaster to decide, "Today will be the day we'll get that perfect pic!" Chill out and wait for a quiet moment when your baby's in a happy mood. That might be today, that might be next week, but it will happen (probably).
Let go of the eye-contact requirement
"Hey! Hi there! Hi cutie! Look at Mommy! Hey! Hey!" Whoa, Mom, you're stressing us all out. It's actually okay if your baby isn't looking straight at the camera: an sincere smile directed off-camera is better than a panicked grin aimed straight at the lens.
Keep it simple
Lay your baby on a light-colored blanket to eliminate visual distractions. (Note: even this may not be good enough for the passport people, as a couple in front of me at the post office the other day learned to their chagrin.)
The more the merrier
Crowding siblings, or friends, into the shot can lead to tension — but if everyone's happy, it can also create a sense of natural fun and lead to priceless family snapshots. Instead of shooing that sibling out of the way when you're taking a photo, consider letting him or her crawl into the frame and see what happens. It could be magic, or it could be a disaster — but that's life, and that's what we're aiming for, right?
Upgrade your equipment
Yes, phones take amazing photos these days — but the same technological developments that have made that possible have also reduced the price of sophisticated cameras with changeable lenses. It's still an investment — a decent semi-pro rig can run several hundred dollars — but with a little practice, you'll be amazed at the difference.
Go pro
Professional photos are also an investment — but there are many more options than the days when your mom plopped you down at ProEx. Wherever you live, you can find dozens of talented professional photographers who will come to you — and can price packages to fit your budget.
Just wait until your baby is old enough to take a selfie
Don't worry, it won't be long.
'Tis the season for everyone to don scary apparel - or, if you're a baby, super cute spooky looks. Via Pinterest, here are some great ideas for Halloween costumes for the youngest family members.
Charlie Brown
A little creepy? Maybe, but no more so than the CGI Charlie Brown from the new Peanuts movie.
Mandrake
I just put this one on here for the Harry Potter fans. Realistically, your kid is only going to sit in a pot for so long...but isn't it worth it for those 30 adorable seconds when she does?
The guy from Up
Walker optional.
R2-D2
A somewhat more sustainable idea for the Star Wars fans—though the trick will be getting those felt pieces to stay in place. You may need to bust out with the sewing machine for this one, because I'm thinking fabric glue ain't gonna cut it for li'l Squirmy McSquirmerson.
Narwhal
This one you have to buy on Etsy, but ISN'T IT WORTH IT?!
Mr. Peanut
Incredibly charming, and you can pair it with a shirt for a sibling that reads, "Produced in a facility that also processes peanuts."
Thing 1 and/or Thing 2, etc.
A low-effort solution, as long as you can find a baby-sized blue wig. Like New Orleans t-shirt retailers, you can also get creative regarding what kind of entity your kid is embodying. Deduction 1 and Deduction 2?
'80s baby
Might want to add an iron-on Journey logo so people don't keep asking if your baby is Richie Tenenbaum.
Baby Einstein
"We started listening to YourClassical every night, and this...just happened!"
Maggie's nemesis
You can figure this one out for yourself.
Normally, when you're putting a baby to bed, light is the last thing you want—and yet a bit of light can help reassure young ones, as well as help parents to avoid stubbed toes. A new lightbulb promises to help solve that conundrum.
Sleepy Baby, a lightbulb from the company LightingScience, emits enough light to let babies (and parents) see their surroundings, but because the bulb omits the parts of the light spectrum that the brain associates with daylight, it doesn't trick young eyes into thinking it's still playtime.
"It's a lifesaver, especially when you're a working mom," one parent told the New York Times—which reports that the new bulb is part of a growing wave of lifestyle lighting.
"Lighting is really not about a fixture in the ceiling anymore," a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute researcher told the Times. "It's about delivering individualized light treatments to people."
The fact that different parts of the spectrum send different cues to the brain—meaning that artificial lighting can interfere with the natural sleep cycle—has long been understood, notes the Times. What's changed is that LED technology is making more sophisticated, making situation-specific lighting more affordable for the average consumer. The Sleepy Baby bulb, for example, sells for $29.95.
Some of the new lighting technologies even promise aphrodisiac effects—all the more reason those Sleepy Baby bulbs might come in handy.
The badlands of western North Dakota are, perhaps, the least hospitable landscape for marching. Rocky and rattlesnake-ridden, the prairie of western North Dakota is arid, hot, and prone to flash-flooding late in summer. Yet, when I scramble over bentonite buttes and sage-scented gullies, I think of Percy Grainger—the underappreciated Australian composer—and his rollicking "Children's March."
For many, Grainger is well-known for his piece "Country Gardens," a very Australian composition that riffs on tunes from Down Under. "Children's March," though less familiar, is light—sometimes edgy—warm, and buoyant.
The piece appears deceptively simpe; it's impossible not to tap your foot to it. Beginning with Grainger's noted predilection for woodwinds, the listener is bopping along as clarinets and oboe alternate the melodies. Slowly, layer by layer more instruments fill out the color of this piece; horns, drums, trumpets, saxophones. A whirl of woodwinds and brass lifts the listener to the stately march of drums, trumpets, and woodblock. Then, a surprise: A portion of the ensemble lends their voices to a brief choral interlude. The melody continues to float among instruments.
Percy Grainger was something of a child prodigy with the piano, and a wit with words: In this piece he directs the horns to play as "violently and roughly" as possible. The piece itself was composed between 1915-1919, with its debut at Columbia University. Grainger came to the United States during the outset of World War I, enlisting as a bandsman, and eventually became a citizen in 1918.
"Children's March," like other Grainger pieces, is not solely a work for band. The instrumentation is flexible: two pianos may play "Children's March," as well as woodwind quintet, even a full symphony orchestra. The piece itself is odd for its time: it uses a piano as a prominent feature in the full band orchestration and it also calls for two four-part vocal sections throughout this brief work.
As I clamber across scoria, and black charcoal, I watch the sun ribbon the badlands in a palette of purples, oranges, greys, and reds. I think of the color, of the buoyancy of "Children's March" as my mind and body march as one, this delightful tune rolling around in my head.
Taylor Brorby is a writer, environmentalist, and GLBT rights activist. He received his M.A. in Liberal Studies from Hamline University in 2013, and is currently a graduate student at Iowa State University in Creative Writing and Environment.
It's funny how a personal experience with a piece of music can cause you to have a unique reaction to it, different from anyone else's. Regardless of what it's composer originally intended, it's the personal encounters we have with music that truly define what they mean to us. For me, a great example of this is Edvard Grieg's Dance of the Elves, a short, bouncy piano piece published in 1867.
I was first introduced to Dance of the Elves when I was a kid, and Mom brought home a CD of Moonlight Classics she found on a bargain rack. It was the first CD of classical music we kids had ever had the chance to explore, and we had to admit there were some interesting—albeit slow (it wasn't called Moonlight Classics for nothing)—selections on the disc. One piece in particular caught our fancy: a 50-second version of Dance of the Elves. Maybe it was the staccato chords, maybe it was the playful little melody, maybe it was even because it was the "fastest" track on the disc—but of all the selections on the CD, it became our favorite.
The story might not have gone beyond that except that at about the same time we kids got into the hobby of amateur—and I mean amateur—filmmaking with a home video camera. Our "films" had one goal: to make us laugh. The "plots" could be nonexistent, the cinematography horrendous, the lighting dreadful, the soundtrack full of our own giggles, but if one of our movies made us laugh, we considered it a success. (It didn't matter if other unfortunate viewers struggled to understand what was happening and didn't laugh at the jokes. "You had to be there," was our repeated refrain.) We would watch a finished film, howl with laughter, put it away for six months, then pull it out and watch it and laugh together again.
Oddly, despite the humble production values of our motion pictures, we did insist on using a fairly sophisticated "score," since adding dramatic background music made the films seem even funnier than they actually were. Moonlight Classics was repeatedly mined for material—mostly because it was still the only CD we had "without singing." With the limited number of tracks available, we naturally returned to Dance of the Elves over and over. It was used for comedic scenes, for "dramatic" moments, for end and opening credits, and for "trailers" of upcoming films. Later on we discovered that there was more to classical music than Moonlight Classics, but Dance of the Elves remained a favorite.
To this day, I can't hear those opening staccato notes without laughing. I don't know how Edvard Grieg intended his listeners to react when hearing that piece, and I'm sure he never imagined a bunch of kids using his music to make silly videos. If he could know, though, I bet he would laugh too.
Daniel Johnson is a Wisconsin-based photographer and writer, and now enjoys producing videos that are of higher quality. You can see his photography work (he does a lot of animals!) at foxhillphoto.com. He still has his copy of Moonlight Classics.
The great modern composer Max Richter is preparing to release his newest work, titled Sleep, which he describes in a film about the composition as "an eight-hour lullaby...an eight-hour place to rest." Recorded in New York's Avatar Studios, it's being touted as the "longest ever piece of classical music" by The Telegraph.
"In order to play it you have to be very awake," says Brian Snow in the video, which you can watch below.
Richter has gone to extreme lengths composing something that he hopes people will actually sleep through. Sleep would be right at home on a list of the slowest pieces of music ever composed.
As Richter says in the video, this eight-hour composition was exceedingly difficult to record because of its slowness and attention to note specific detail. "Long, slow bows, nowhere to hide in the music. Every note has to be perfect. It all has to be perfect otherwise you break the illusion."
The eight hour composition will premiere in Berlin this September; an accompanying album will feature a one-hour "daytime listening version." The live performance, which will run from midnight to 8:00 a.m., will feature beds rather than seats so attendees can participate in the full experience of Richter's vision.
Garrett Tiedemann is a writer, filmmaker and composer who owns the multimedia lab CyNar Pictures and its record label American Residue Records.
To this day, no one is quite sure who wrote Toy Symphony. The kid-friendly work has worn Franz Joseph Haydn and Leopold Mozart's names throughout the years, but it is now disputed whether either of them wrote it.
Even without a name attached to it, the piece has become a mainstay for children's shows and Christmastime concerts. Each of its three movements features the sounds of actual toys and instruments that sound like they came straight from Geppetto's workshop. The piece calls for a trumpet, ratchet, nightingale, cuckoo, drum, and for a handful of toys. Noisemakers rattle throughout the first of its three movements. The cuckoo and nightingale call out mischievously during the second, and in the third, the trumpets channel their inner kazoo. The presence of the toy instruments make this a fun piece for children to play, especially when there are also some toys waiting under the tree.
Composed in the mid-1700s but not published until well into the 1800s, Toy Symphony first appeared with the last name "Haydn" on it. A story surfaced that Haydn composed the piece after buying a handful of toys at a fair, then played it for his children at a Christmas party. Because the work did not appear in Haydn's self-assembled catalog of work, scholars started to second-guess this story.
The piece is now commonly credited to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's father and teacher, Leopold. He was thought to have composed a similar work, The Musical Sleigh-Ride, which uses sound effects in the same playful manner. But Leopold was known throughout his career to hand-copy pieces he admired, and it was later discovered that Leopold might not have written Sleigh-Ride either. Some have speculated that the piece comes from songs written by different musicians from around Berechtesgaden, a city that produced many toy musical instruments at the time.
It's possible that Toy Symphony's real writer will never emerge. It's also possible that the composer wanted to remain anonymous. Like Camille Saint-Saens and his Carnival of the Animals, the composer might have thought the piece was too silly to be lumped in with a more serious body of work. The public has voted its approval, though—and who can resist a bunch of noisemakers cranking in time with the first violin?
Hailey Colwell is a writer and a recent college graduate living in St. Paul, Minn. She enjoys producing plays, running, and looking after other people's pets.
]]>There aren't many bands less soothing than the Replacements, but that hasn't stopped the Twinkle Twinkle Little Rock Star series from creating an album of ethereal, instrumental lullabies based on the Minneapolis rockers' music.
The collection, which is oddly poignant, starts out—with a cover of the band's 1985 anthem "Bastards of Young." The track listing is an interesting illustration of how readily the band's young-and-anxious songbook can be adapted for the very young (and hopefully not very anxious): the album includes "Achin' to Be," "I'll Be You," and "We'll Inherit the Earth." Weary parents waking up for late-night feedings will find new resonance in the band's barroom ballad "Here Comes a Regular."
The Twinkle Twinkle Little Rock Star series now has over 200 titles, including lullaby adaptations of songs by such unlikely artists as Iron Maiden, the Misfits, and Deadmau5. The Replacements album, released on June 29, is now available via all major retailers and streaming services.
Claude-Emma Debussy was only three years old when her father wrote a six-part piano suite starring her favorite toys. Captivated by his daughter's childhood, Claude Debussy composed his tender 1908 work, The Children's Corner, both to entertain her and to explore music through the eyes of a child.
The Children's Corner isn't for children to play, nor is it exclusively about them: it incorporates both the experience of being young and the nostalgia of watching a child grow up. Though it shows his technical prowess, Debussy simplified his playing and even took a stab at humor throughout the piece to amuse his little one.
He called her Chou-Chou and loved being a father. Though in his 50s, Debussy was delighted to have a toddler. He raised her with an English nanny, and the toys in Chou-Chou's playroom took on English names. Taking a cue from these women, the "anglomaniac" composer gave each part of his suite an English title.
The first movement, named after the piano textbook Gradus ad Parnassum, depicts a pianist playing key exercises. The notes grow more and more complex throughout the piece—more than the average child could handle playing (though this youngster seems pretty okay with it). Perhaps it speaks to Debussy's hope that his daughter would one day be up to the task.
Next comes "Jimbo's Lullaby." Inspired by Chou-Chou's stuffed elephant who apparently needed a bedtime story before going to sleep, Debussy re-imagined the animal's sleepy footsteps through a progression of climbing and falling keystrokes. Music writers have argued Debussy misspelled the name of the song, and that the elephant was actually named Jumbo (his grasp on the English language he loved might not have been that great after all).
The next parts take us from delicate porcelain chimes ("Serenade of the Doll") to scenes of a dark winter afternoon when children are trapped indoors ("The Snow is Dancing"). The next movement, "The Little Shepherd," uses three piano solos to create a landscape far from the Paris of Chou-Chou's childhood, but perhaps visited in her daydreams.
The last part is "Golliwogg's Cakewalk," a ragtime dance suggesting the choppy movements of the rag doll it was named for. The dance is interrupted by notes from Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde. The dark breaks are met with banjo-like responses ending with a slapstick flourish, as if giving the rag doll one floppy bow. (Unfortunately, while the music is delightful, the doll that inspired it is anything but.)
When The Children's Corner was published, Debussy wrote a humble dedication for his daughter: "To my dear little Chou-Chou, with her father's tender apologies for what is to follow." Though sweet at the time, his words also foreshadowed a dark break in the Debussys' happiness: Chou-Chou outlived her father by just over a year, dying of diphtheria in 1919 when she was 14 years old.
Hailey Colwell is a recent graduate of the University of Minnesota and a co-founder of Theatre Corrobora.
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Like a trip to the zoo or an uncle's bad jokes, The Carnival of the Animals is supposed to be fun. So fun, in fact, that composer Camille Saint-Saens feared it would ruin his image. Though he banned most of it from public performance until after its death, it is among his biggest hits today. The French composer was supposed to be working on his third symphony when he took a break to compose Carnival in a small Austrian village in 1886. Though he had a great time writing it, he worried the humorous piece would harm his reputation as a serious musician. Insisting the work be performed in private, he allowed only the iconic cello movement The Swan to be published during his lifetime.
The French Romantic composer's bit of fun makes for an eclectic and imaginative lullaby. Each of the suite's 14 movements introduces us to a different animal or group of animals, with a small number of instruments mimicking their voices or the way they move. Starting with the lion's roar and slowing to reflect the elephant's bulk, Saint-Saens pokes fun at the music of his time.
With just stringed instruments and piano, he illustrates a tortoise's plodder with an ultra-slow version of Jacques Offenbach's Galop infernal (known by many as the "Can-Can). In the shortest movement, Personages with Long Ears, he creates a conversation between two braying donkeys with loud, high violin notes. It has been written that Saint-Saens was playing a joke on critics by comparing them to these beasts. Perhaps even more satirical is the eleventh movement, Pianists, in which the composer makes fun of his own kind while mimicking young musicians' clumsy scale exercises.
Humor aside, Carnival also journeys into peaceful territory. An isolated clarinet creates a scene of a bird calling though a forest (The Cuckoo in the Depths of the Woods). In the dreamlike Aquarium, keyboard instruments echo like a music box over haunting violin and viola chords. Near the very end, the melancholy Swan makes a case for why, despite all the jokes within the suite, we should take Saint-Saens for the serious composer he wanted to be. The piece's finale mirrors the lion's royal entrance while gathering the voices of the other animals. The braying donkeys—or the critics, if that rumor is true—have one last laugh before the triumphant final chords.
Hailey Colwell is a recent graduate of the University of Minnesota and a co-founder of Theatre Corrobora.
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When your job consists of teaching and hanging out with seven- and eight-year-olds, there are many moments of unexpected fun — like joke writing during our morning snack break. (Ask my kids the one about a ghost's favorite fruit.) Even so, Wednesdays from 11:00 to 11:30 a.m. are dependably the best part of our week. This is reserved sketching time: the students imitate blue herons by John James Audubon, the paintings of Sandro Botticelli, and recently, Vincent van Gogh.
Early in the year, I established the rhythm of listening to classical music while they sketch. We've cycled through Mozart's piano sonatas, Vivaldi's Four Seasons, and Haydn's "Surprise" Symphony. This music fosters an atmosphere of calm diligence, which is lovely; no teacher would argue with me about that. Classical music, though, was not written to be background noise. We listen actively to these timeless works, some for the first time, and discuss what we are hearing. The conversations we have as the students sketch are a delight.
I wanted to introduce my students to the world of classical vocal music — which is, for me, the height of music arts. As a singer, I've spent years in choir rehearsals and voice lessons. Christmas was approaching. I decided to use Handel's Messiah for our next sketching time, but I had to consider the execution.
When I played the King's Singers for a group of second graders last year, you'd have thought I was showing stand-up comedy. The trained singing voice can be difficult for the untrained ear to understand. Kids (and some adults) tend to treat things they don't understand as jokes: if they don't get it, it must be of little value and therefore ridiculous.
Before we listened, I took time to explain the significance of Messiah and noted that many people listen to it every year at Christmastime. I also talked with the students about how hard musicians work in order to sing this way and gave a quick synopsis of the soprano aria I was going to play. They listened with grave seriousness. We made observations: she could sing loud and soft, low and high, slow and very fast. No laughing whatsoever.
The next week, they asked to listen to Messiah again. Since I had made my own opinions of the piece clear, I was suspicious of flattery, but the students engaged in the music openly and honestly. In the Wednesdays leading up to Christmas break, we worked through a significant portion of Messiah. The students contemplated recitatives, arias, and choruses with generous minds.
We discussed the definitions of the words soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, and distinguished new sounds, like that of the harpsichord. We noticed how the choir and the soloists took turns singing and text painting: how Handel wrote the music to sound like what the text says, so we can know what the words mean even if we can't understand what they are, as in the chorus "All We Like Sheep Have Gone Astray."
The students were probably feeding at least a little bit off of my enthusiasm — but isn't that all right? We all discover our passions at the feet of instructors invested and passionate enough to extend a little of their fire to us. Maybe that transferred spark ignites, and maybe not. The important thing is that we experience it. Then we get to choose: yes or no? My students could choose yes to fractions, insect life cycles, the Battle of Marathon, Vincent van Gogh, or George Frideric Handel. They could just as easily choose no.
I don't use music in the classroom as a sort of aural sedative (though the thought has crossed my mind on certain days when the moon is full). I use music in the classroom as an invitation to a realm few of my students have visited. I get to play Messiah's majestic overture and watch their eyes, hear their impressions, and answer their questions.
The music is new for them, and their world expands. I listen with them, as if for the first time, and it is new again for me.
Allison Wall is a fiction and essay writer currently living in the Twin Cities. As a semi-retired intermediate musician, she is always on the lookout for ways to combine music with writing.
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]]>French-Canadian publishing company The Secret Mountain publishes children's books that pair stories with CDs of specially recorded and carefully curated music — everything from folk to lullabies to various world musics. A great deal of classical repertoire has made it onto those discs, the latest of which is Sleep Softly, a book/CD of classical lullabies performed by French chamber music group L'Ensemble Agora, released last month.
David Pastor (Agora's French horn player and one of its founding members) and Sergio Menozzi (the composer/arranger in charge of the repertoire for the Sleep Softly CD), answered a few of our questions about the music, and about lullabies in general, via e-mail. Their answers were translated from French to English by Roland Stringer of The Secret Mountain.
Several of the pieces included on this CD feature ternary rhythms (this quality is noted in the book as well); why do you think three-part rhythmic underpinning lends itself so well to lullabies?
Sergio Menozzi: It's true that ternary rhythms lend themselves to the gentle rocking that is required in interpreting a lullaby. It's not necessarily the number of beats per measure but rather the division of each beat into three parts that counts. For example, a measure in 6/8, even if it has two beats, still portrays this division of each beat by three. The swaying of a waltz is really what creates the calm rocking, "softer" effect, more so than the binary.
How were the pieces included on the CD chosen?
David Pastor: We initially chose around 40 works from various composers, for the most part from the Romantic era. That period seems to have spawned the greatest number of lullabies. Actually, the CD doesn't focus strictly on lullabies. We selected romances, adagios, slow movements that are dreamlike, along with compositions that were named "lullaby," "berceuse," or "wiegenlied."
How do you think the lullabies included in this collection interact with Elodie Nouhen's illustrations?
David Pastor: I love Elodie Nouhen's illustrations and the way in which they interact with the music. Strings of wool, the weaving of the hair, all of those different fabrics that come together to form a canvas...I really like the way it creates a dreamlike world for the reader and listener. And what about those roses that jump out at you with petals that fly off into some kind dreamland, evoking the lightness of the music! We can almost smell them and are dazzled by their fragrance (the words to Brahm's Wiegenlied specifically mention carnations and roses, by the way).
Also, although there are many soft dreamlike illustrations, you'll also note that some of them are somewhat unsettling: characters that are half-Âhuman, half-Âanimal, with oversized heads or huge legs, and appear to come out of some kind of nightmare...the world of sleep is a strange one, and our lullabies are not always serene!
What qualities make a piece of music suitable as a lullaby?
Sergio Menozzi: The pieces selected are from major works by important composers. That in itself makes each selection remarkable. In general, a lullaby must soothe and comfort the listener, give him a sense that everything will be fine.
What are the special challenges of interpreting lullabies?
David Pastor: We excluded lullabies with lyrics, which allowed us to focus completely on the music. That's why we invited a composer (Sergio Menozzi) and not an arranger to join us. It allowed us to rethink each piece, aiming for a different aesthetic so that we could offer a new way of listening to the piece. After receiving Sergio's charts, we concentrated on grasping the spirit of each orchestration: Brahms's Sandmandchen, for instance, was a lot of work. Each musician had to make an effort to stay on cue and paid special attention to pitch since the notes fly about the instruments like a ray of light coming through a prism and immediately creating a kind of music box effect. Other pieces, like Schubert's Gute nacht, demanded that we adjust the tempo so that the spirit of the lullaby wouldn't overshadow the theme of obstination and wandering.
What are your other favorite pieces of classical music for children?
David Pastor: I enjoy playing symphonic poems for my children: The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Night on Bald Mountain, or even L'Arlesienne. They also love opera since we tell a story and have music that expresses the characters' feelings. The story is very important for my children...for me, too!
Disney's Fantasia is amazing! Both productions have made a real impression on me and I can't help myself from seeing the images from the movies when I play the pieces live: Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, Stravinsky's The Firebird, and Respighi's Pines of Rome. They all work terribly well! Respighi imagined a final movement with the marching of a triumphant Roman legion and Disney created a fantastic ballet with flying whales...I love it!
Several of the pieces included on the CD have narratives evoking tragedy or darkness. Why do you think so many composers have turned to gentle music to underpin such fraught narrative moments?
David Pastor: It's true that you'll often find a text that goes with music that conjures up dark or wild emotions while evoking a sense of calm and serenity. During the Romantic period, you're on the edge. Sleep (and the lullaby) is likened to death. The sleeping friend's face suggests that death is on the horizon, that it will seal the love for him:
No! The pure light that's glowing/ Upon your brow divine/ Will surely not be going/ But will again tomorrow shine
The Romantic artist takes his feelings of love to another level by combining melancholy and passion, eternal love and death's quietude.
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In the summer of 1987, my parents moved us to a farmhouse south of Kiester, Minnesota. We lived a softball's throw from Iowa. Mom was pregnant with my brother; Dad traveled as director with the high school's marching band; and I had ten cats, all named after classical composers.
Childhood memories from this depth are fleeting. I remember being handed a circus peanut candy when I first sat on the regular toilet; I recall the lights on the car at night when my brother was brought home; and I remember the ten cats, swirling around me while I pumped my legs on a swingset in our backyard facing the wall of growing corn.
My parents loved classical music. When I was seven, Mom drove my brother and me two hours north to see Bobby McFerrin conduct the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in a performance of Handel's Water Music. I sat with a big red-white-and-blue bomb pop melting over my hand as Mom clicked her tongue and wiped off the mess. We listened to the bright strains of music and watched the crowd — fields of people — all on the riverbank listening to Handel. This was the city, I thought.
Once my cousins asked me if I watched Saturday Night Live, and I lied and said I did watch television on Saturday nights, and I thought it was live. While other families caught up on pop culture, Mom and Dad played us classical music. At night, my brother and I in my Dad's t-shirts would run around the house barefoot to Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain.
Before I ever borrowed my brother's Weezer CD, before I ever downloaded Ben Folds Five in college, we had a tape cassette of the Chieftains that we played quite literally to shreds. Whenever I hear Elvis Costello singing the opening to "St. Stephen's Day Murders," I think of me and my brother, bundled in parkas, eating microwavable ham and cheese sandwiches on the way to Grandma's in South Dakota. Among the cats, Schubert, a yellow tabby, was my favorite. Beethoven was old, fat, three-legged, and scary. He moved achingly around the swingset's poles, blind in one eye. Then there was gray-and-blue Bach, the pink-nosed Mozart, and maybe Haydn, hiding under the shed's doorway. The cats lived outside and ate field mice. Their fur was matted and rough; their teeth sharp. Apparently the feral cats came with the rental.
I don't recall a formal naming ceremony. I can't imagine my parents named the cats that way for educational purposes — but as a three-year-old, I didn't need to be told who Beethoven was, or who Schubert, Haydn, or Bach were. On car rides, my parents played tape cassettes of Mr. Beethoven Lives Upstairs and a goofy radio drama about Bach's children. I already had literacy with classical music. These cats were old friends. Years later I would discover that my favorite music supposedly carried pretension. An older kid at the park had a copy of some album with a naked baby swimming after a dollar. In college, everyone else's parents supposedly raised them on Springsteen. My first CD was Boyz II Men — which, incidentally, I loved — but I never understood these claims against my Bach tapes, my large-print Tchaikovsky sheet music for piano.
My parents were as tied to classical music as they were to newspapers and coffee in the morning. There was nothing "classical." This is what we listened to, our emotional vernacular. All music since has been measured against the memory of those cats rubbing against my legs, carrying the names of these distant, European men with wild hair and fiery eyes. I wonder whether the cats knew they carried these names. A cat is a cat — but these raggedy felines seemed regal, with arched backs, inhabiting the opportune backyard of a high school band director and his high-school-English-teacher wife.
My parents had come east from South Dakota and Nebraska during the 1980s, a dark time in rural America, when farms closed up all around us. Mom and Dad's artist friends had their farmhouse foreclosed by the bank. We also lived in a foreclosed farmhouse, a big, dark home for a child — but after the family before us had moved out, had said goodbye to the country life they'd only ever known, there I was, standing on my tip-toes on a chair, furtively glancing over the kitchen window, watching as this mysterious, seemingly ancient grey-furred Beethoven slowly marched across the grass toward the shed, a young Schubert and Mozart tripping along behind him, their tails high in the air.
Christopher Vondracek wrote a memoir half about himself and half about Lawrence Welk. He teaches in the English Department at Saint Mary's University in Winona.
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My mother told us that in the beginning she sang to us all the time because it was one of the only reliable ways she could keep us happy and entertained when we were babies. To this day, she tells me, she hasn't met a baby who isn't captivated by music.
I am the oldest of five, and music is in my family's bones. Classical music was as woven through the fabric of my childhood as rock, folk, blues, and many other genres. There were different kinds of music in our house for different kinds of moods. My mother played classical radio when she wanted a moment of calm or when we dressed up and had tea parties; the Beatles and the Beach Boys crooned when she was feeling playful, and she tended to turn to Frank Sinatra and traditional Celtic tunes when she felt nostalgic.
Whenever my mother had an opportunity to sit down at a piano, she played the opening lines of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata in the most beautiful, melancholy way. It made me feel in awe of her, that she could play something so beautifully and entirely captivating. I yearned with my whole body and imagination to be able to create something like that.
The first song I learned to sing was "Baa Baa Black Sheep" — the old French melody "Ah! Vous Dirai-Je, Maman," on which many composers have written variations (perhaps most famously, Mozart). I was about 2 years old when I first sang it in its entirety, and if my mother's story is to be trusted, my rendition went something like this:
"Baa baa deet, habool, yetoo, yetoo, reek, rack, roll!"
As I grew up, I had the fascinating experience of watching my little siblings develop and grow into their own musical identities over the years. The first time I saw my little sister sing her first song all the way through, I understood the magic of that moment. I understood why my mother had told me that story of "Baa Baa Deet" so many times over the years.
I practiced classical music pieces for the litany of music lessons I took over my growing up years. I learned Gershwin, Vivaldi, Handel, and so many other composers as I sang and practiced their lines over and over through years of choir and band rehearsals, violin, guitar, oboe, and voice lessons. By the time I was in early high school I had taught myself a few songs on the piano — including Beethoven's "Fur Elise" and Bruce Rowland's "Jessica's Theme."
My mother worked as a liturgist, so her office was in the church. I sometimes was able to sneak into the empty church on late nights when I was waiting for her, just lighting one spotlight and losing myself in playing these songs over and over to the empty pews on the church's beautiful glossy black piano. Growing up in a family of seven, it could be difficult to find quiet alone space at home; I cherished these times of playing in the empty church, one of the few places where I could completely relax, let go entirely of self-consciousness, and lose myself in the feeling and experience of playing music, without distraction.
My mother taught me and gave me space for music to be an expression of whoever I was, wherever I was at that moment. To calm and soothe myself with music. This is one of the most precious things she imparted to me.
Now I am 32 years old, and I still turn to music to soothe myself. My Spotify playlists generally contain an array of mixes from Beethoven to Zakir Hussain, Yo-Yo Ma's Cello Suites with Neil Young's early records, Joao Gilberto, and FKA Twigs. After all, I have to be prepared for all possible moods.
And every once in a while, when I really need some inspiration, I find a piano and lose myself in the opening lines of the Moonlight Sonata.
Corina Bernstein has been looking at the world through a lens ever since she received a Brownie Camera at the tender age of six and began her journey as a storyteller. Corina has photographed and written extensively, nationally and internationally, documenting intimate, inspiring, and compelling moments of the people and places she encounters. She currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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