NEH-Funded Education Project "Dvořák and America" Provides Context behind Music

By -

GIVES STUDENTS DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF COMPOSER AND HIS “NEW WORLD SYMPHONY”

Thanks to a generous (and rare) grant from the National Endowment of Humanities (NEH), Pacific Symphony is about to dive into an exciting new education initiative—“Dvořák and America”—led by Music Director Carl St.Clair and developed by New York-based author/scholar and Pacific Symphony artistic advisor, Joseph Horowitz. The project links symphonic performance with humanities content to provide in-depth exploration to deepen students’ understanding and connection to Dvořák’s “New World Symphony.” The project is also an extension of the Symphony’s innovative “Music Unwound” series, which endeavors to contextualize music to provide deeper emotional and intellectual engagement of the audience. While “Music Unwound,” now in its third year, has previously targeted adults, this latest incarnation targets for the first time a younger segment and includes Pacific Symphony Youth Orchestra (PSYO), plus hundreds of Irvine Unified School District (IUSD) students and faculty (including Alderwood Basics Plus Elementary and orchestra students from the district’s four high schools (Irvine, Northwood, University and Woodbridge).

“It’s an honor to be one of the few orchestras to receive funding from the NEH,” says St.Clair. “To our knowledge this is a nationally unprecedented initiative, combining a multi-media thematic youth orchestra concert with an educational exercise not only for the audience, and for area schools, but for the youth orchestra musicians themselves. Through the series of activities the students will participate in prior to the concert, we hope they will gain a broader understanding of Dvořák and, we hope, a strong appreciation and bond to this special piece of music.

“We know that a well-rounded music education is not about simply learning to play the notes,” St.Clair adds. “It is equally important to develop the capacity to listen and respond to music.”

The project looks at how Dvořák, in coming to America, became an “American composer”; that his American accent in such works as the “New World Symphony” and American Suite is not a superficial overlay, but a distinct American style different from the more chromatic and texturally dense style of his European works. The Dvořák story exemplifies the importance of the arts in pedagogy and in human life, as well as how culture can help individuals or communities better understand themselves. “Dvořák and America” focuses on issues of race and national identity catalyzed by urbanization and immigration a century ago—issues which remain crucial to the American experience today.

“Music Unwound,” at its core, is a concerted effort to correlate language, literature, culture, philosophy and visual arts with music, while forging new alliances between and among orchestras, museums and universities in each host city. A consortium of four orchestras led by Pacific Symphony, including the Buffalo Philharmonic, North Carolina Symphony and Louisville Orchestra, became the joint recipient of a $300,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)—a multi-year commitment to “Music Unwound,” integrating humanities content with live concert performances. This is the first NEH public programs grant to go to an orchestra in a decade. The NEH National Education Project supported the creation of Horowitz’ young readers book, Dvořák in America, and the Robert Winter/Peter Bogdanoff companion interactive DVD.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Role of Music in Opera

By -
There are numerous books on the topic, and every composer, librettist, director, singer and audience member has their opinion as to what role the music should play in an opera. In a play without music, the words ought to support the meaning behind a character's actions. However, in the case of action movies, often times the action is what tells the story and there aren't words, just images to forward the plot. We might hear music to accompany action, build tension, but the action tells the story. Musicals tend to speak until the emotion of the moment just "has" to break out in song - unless it's something like "Mama Mia" where the dialog is the rails we travel on between songs; the songs themselves, written before the concept of the musical, are the focus of the production, while the story is secondary. Operas are a different beast. The music provides emotion to the words spoken, but it also plays the role of ambience when there is only action. In &quo
Read more

Episode 210b: Joyeuse le départ

By -
Image
Podcast:  Play in new window  |  Download Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts  |  Android  |  Google Play  |  Stitcher  |  TuneIn  |  RSS Provost Cunningham has Transmigrated, but to where! What is Dr Sage going to do with his body? And how can she bring home her friends, Abigail and Erasmus, without also bring home Cunningham? What are they going to say when they find the “skeleton” she’s hiding in her closet? Cast: Eddie Louise Clark  as Dr Sage Chip Clark  as Professor Savant Justin Bremer  as the Narrator Emily Riley Piatt  as Abigail Entwhistle, Calypso & Dean Stewart Written by  Eddie Louise Theme music by  Unwoman Sound Design by  Chip Michael
Read more

The Art of String Quartets by Brian Ferneyhough

By -
Image
When an artist sets paint to canvas, there are brush strokes used for different effects. Sometimes those strokes are subtle, imperceptible; they produce works of art like the Mona Lisa . Other times the very obvious nature of the stroke is the art, as in works by Van Gogh. With some composers of music, the notes on the page are their craft. How those notes translate into an aural experience is what defines some composers as great artists. Brian Ferneyhough has a masterful command of the techniques of putting notes on the page. These techniques are sometimes so subtle, even though written in black and white, they escape detection. Some of what he attempts with his music is just that, to escape detection, to bury the framework, diverting the ear away from the structure, so only the music is heard . The subtlety is so fine it is almost imperceptible. Even though he studied at several institutions, he is considered self-taught, studying scores from Boule
Read more