A World of Music

Arriving at the final stop on our tour, let’s look back at all the composers we’ve met and recall the music we’ve heard. In this episode, we’ll listen to excerpts from the concert program, and you will use what you learned about pitch, rhythm, mood and dynamics to tell us what you think each composer was trying to say. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please be sure to let us know, and try our other classical music podcasts, like Classical Music in America, or Beethoven Rocks!

In the furthest destination in our journey, we travel to Russia. Dmitri Shostakovich used his music to paint a picture of his war-torn homeland. His Symphony No. 10 recalls his memories of the tanks and soldiers, and he composed music that sounded as if you were living through a war. Examine what happens when sound changes its dynamic (from soft to loud--and from loud to louder) while listening to Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10. Our journey's not over yet!

Everyone knows what it feels like to be sad, but what if you wanted to write music that expressed emotions without using words? On this stop in our tour, we’ll listen how Benjamin Britten used melodies sketched in his childhood notebooks to capture emotion in the “Sentimental Saraband” from his Simple Symphony. The final stop on out tour is Russia. Better bring a jacket!

Moving on to Norway in our tour, we meet composer Edvard Grieg. Grieg’s challenge was to write music that told a clear story without using any words. Listen as he uses music to help the hero of his story, Peer Gynt, escape from mountain trolls. Next stop, England.

For such a small country, Austria has had a huge impact on European culture and on classical music. On this stop of our tour, we'll hear how Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart used pitch in his Symphony no. 29. In the next episode, we'll be off to Norway!

Hundreds of years ago, the world was introduced to the orchestra. It was love at first sound. Everyone was captivated by the never-before-heard sounds of some 20 to 100 musicians playing together. Before the orchestra, classical music was for groups of three (trios) or four (quartets)—tops! The invention of this much bigger musical group meant bigger musical possibilities, and the world’s imagination went wild. Composers all across Europe were inspired to try their hand at creating symphonies for the orchestra and pushing classical music to new limits. Next stop: Austria!