Year Eight Water Music

(Lesson One)

Today we will be learning: About various types of water and the sounds they make. That we will be composing a group composition - How to make a water composition.

What rhythm, texture, timbre & dynamics are and how to use them in our water composition. About musicians who have composed water music - Bedich Smetana

Water Music

List as many types of water that you can where do you come in contact with water.

Tap water Bath water Toilet water Puddle

Rain River Sea Ice Snow Icicle

How would you describe the texture or woeds that describe how each feels : Tap water Bath water Toilet water Puddle Rain rough, cold, variety of speeds smooth, warm, gentle

River starts slowly, starts gentle, flowing & smooth. It can get rougher as it approaches the sea it calms. Sea Various textures smooth as a mill pond, rippling, extremely rough.

Ice Snow

Icicle

doesnt drip all the time can have soft, light drips or rather spiky ones.

When we want to compose water music, or indeed any music we need to take into account: Rhythm This will help create how rough or smooth the water is. Texture This will do the same as Rhythm but also help create the volume of water. timbre Will help create the character of the water you wish to achieve dynamics This will help create whether the water is stormy/ heavy or light

We will exam rhythm now & how we write it on Homework 4

You will get your homework booklet in your next music period so please write what a pentatonic scale and an ostinato is on page 93 of your homework diary. PLEASE RECORD YOUR HOMEWORK NOW & THEN WE WILL LOOK AT A FAMOUS MUSICIANS WHO WROTE WATER MUSIC. HOMEWORK Complete homework 4 in your homework booklet.

Bedich Smetanas
Life and Music

Bedich Smetana created a new musical identity for the Czechs, inspired by popular legends, history and countryside. Now Smetana is recognised as the vital force in establishing Bohemian music around the globe - and not even his successor Dvorak made his homeland such an indelible part of his musical style. He was mainly known for two works: The Bartered Bride & M Vlast (of which Vltava is the second piece)

Due to his father's resistance, Smetana's hopes of a musical career seemed remote until he secured a job teaching piano to the German family of Count Leopold Thun. The money he earned was used to pay for his own tuition with the renowned Josef Proksch. Smetana launched himself 'on tour' as a concert pianist in the summer of 1847, but the audience numbers at the first venue was so low that he cancelled the tour. Short of money, he set up a piano school in Prague in 1848 and enough money to support him living. Liszt, who had become a close friend, helped to secure publishing of some of the younger composer's piano pieces. The spirit of independence during the 1840s spread revolution fever across Europe, and Prague was no exception. Smetana helped defend the barricades in the unsuccessful

1848 Prague Revolution. His early attempts at serious composition were received indifferently while his playing career failed to materialise.

Smetana married his childhood sweetheart Katerina Kolrov, who bore him four daughters, three of whom died tragically between 1854 and 1856. His favourite, Bedriska, had shown great musical promise and the anguish caused by her death from scarlet fever was poured out in Smetana's 1855 Piano Trio. Smetana moved to Sweden in 1856 to search for a teaching post. Appointed director of the Gteborg Philharmonic, he was embraced by the Swedes as both a pianist and conductor, and he may have moved there permanently if it hadn't been for the severely conservative musical climate. Smetana produced three symphonic poems. Katerina died in 1859. The following year, Smetana married his brother's sister-in-law Bettina Ferdinandov. Then, as a result of Austria granting political autonomy to Bohemia, he returned to Prague in 1861. Smetana scored a hit with The Brandenburgers in Bohemia (1863), for which he won the coveted Harrach Prize for the best opera on a Czech theme. Smetana finally established himself with his second opera The Bartered Bride (1866), and became director of the Prague Provisional Theatre. His next opera Dalibor, composed for the foundation stone ceremony at the permanent Prague National Theatre on 16 May 1868, was a moderate success until the press criticised it for 'Wagnerism'. It was M vlast ('My Fatherland') - a set of six nationalistic symphonic poems (composed 1872-79) - that re-established his popularity. Second in the cycle, Vltava ('Moldau'), which follows the progress of Bohemia's most celebrated river, became his most popular work. Meanwhile, an infection was starting to affect Smetana's hearing. During 1874 he became totally deaf in one ear and was forced to resign from his post at the theatre. In his final years, the frustrations that dogged Smetana's career turned to tragedy, culminating in the ramshackle premiere of his eighth and final opera The Devil's Wall (1882) - despite it containing some of the best music he wrote. Smetana's worsening condition undermined his sanity and he spent the last three weeks of his life in an asylum. Undervalued in his own lifetime, Smetana was buried a national hero.

Did you know?

One of the most notable times M vlast was used was as a political expression of nationalist solidarity during the 1944 Prague Spring Festival to celebrate the 120th anniversary of the composer's birth. Despite the Nazis' best attempts to prevent

nationalistic outbursts, his music was used in a musico-political protest against the occupation.

The Vltava (Moldau) is the longest river in the Czech Republic, running north from its source in umava through esk Krumlov, esk Budjovice, and Prague, merging with the Elbe at Mlnk. It is 430 km long. The river is crossed by 18 bridges and runs through Prague over 31 km. Several dams were built on it in the 1950s, the biggest being Lipno Dam in umava. In August 2002 a flood of the Vltava killed several people and caused massive damage and disruption along its length. The best-known of the classical Czech composer Bedich Smetana's set of six symphonic poems M vlast ("My Motherland") is called Vltava (or The Moldau), and is a musical depiction of the river's course through Bohemia.

M vlast
M Vlast, traditionally translated as "My Country", though more strictly meaning "homeland"(sometimes even as Motherland) is a set of six symphonic poems composed between 1874 and 1879 by the Czech composer Bedich Smetana. While it is often performed as a single work in six movements with the exception of Vltava the six pieces were conceived as individual works. They had their own separate premieres between 1875 and 1880; the premiere of the complete set took place on 5 November 1882 in Prague. In these works Smetana combined the symphonic poem form with the ideals of nationalistic music which were current in the late nineteenth century. Each poem depicts some aspect of the countryside, history, or legends of Bohemia. Vltava, also known by its German name The Moldau, was composed between 20 November and 8 December 1874 and was premiered on 4 April 1875. It is about 12 minutes long, and is in the key of E minor. In this piece, Smetana uses tone painting to evoke the sounds of one of Bohemia's great rivers. The composition describes the course of the Vltava, starting from: two small springs, one Cold and one Warm,

both streams join to make a single river, the course of the Vltava flows through a forest while a hunt is in progress then it flows through a village were a wedding is being celebrated, In the night's moonshine the water flows a little slower while water fairies play. In the morning the river flows on as normal with the tempo a little quicker. The Vltava swirls into the St John's Rapids; then it widens and flows toward Prague, past the Vyehrad, and then majestically vanishes into the distance, ending at the Labe (or Elbe, in German).

The piece contains Smetana's most famous tune. It is an adaptation of the melody La Mantovana, attributed to the Italian renaissance tenor Giuseppe Cenci (also known as Giuseppino), which, in a borrowed Moldovan form, was also the basis for the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah. The tune also appears in the major in an old folk Czech song Koka leze drou ("The Cat Crawls Through the Hole") and Hans Eisler used it for his "Song of the Moldau".