Category Archives: Daily Listening Assignment

Daily Listening Assignments ~ July 8

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Today, we’ll listen to the Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67, of Ludwig van Beethoven.  It was written between 1804–1808. It is one of the best-known compositions in classical music, and one of the most frequently played symphonies. As is typical of symphonies in the classical period, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is in four movements.

I’m sure you’ve heard the first 8 notes before…

Since it was written for orchestra, each instrument has its own line:

A piano version, transcribed by Liszt

From Disney’s Fantasia 2000:

Pink learns to play the violin, and interrupts a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with the Pink Panther theme played on various instruments.

Beethoven’s Wig:

Arrangements of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony can be found in Piano Maestro and lots of books including Piano Pronto’s Movement 2, Movement 5 (Victory Theme) and Beethoven: Exploring His Life and Music.

Daily Listening Assignments ~ July 7

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Today’s Listening Assignment is Country Gardens by Percy Grainger.

“Country Gardens” is an English folk tune collected by Cecil Sharp from the playing of William Kimber and arranged for piano in 1918 by Percy Grainger.

The tune and the Grainger arrangement for piano and orchestra is a favorite with school orchestras, and other performances of the work include morris dancing.

A piano version:

Piano duet (four-hands)

Clarinet solo

Orchestra

The Ambrosian Children’s Choir

From the Muppets

And, how a Morris Dance is done:

Find Country Gardens on IMSLP, Piano Maestro (under the method book section) and Piano Pronto: Movement 2

Daily Listening Assignments ~ July 5

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“Morning Mood” is part of Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt, Op. 23 was written in 1875.

The melody uses the pentatonic (five-note) scale, lending itself to beginning piano books.

Orchestra:

Music box:

Cartoon:

Flash mob(!!)

Morning Mood is available in Piano Maestro, Piano Pronto Prelude (as Morning Theme) and other books.

Daily Listening Assignments ~ July 3

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Pictures at an Exhibition is a suite of ten pieces (plus a recurring, varied Promenade) composed for the piano by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky in 1874.

The suite is Mussorgsky’s most famous piano composition and has become a showpiece for virtuoso pianists. It has become further known through various orchestrations and arrangements produced by other musicians and composers, with Maurice Ravel’s arrangement being by far the most recorded and performed.

You can download the sheet music at IMSP or I have a copy of the book, as well as simplified sheet music.

The work opens with a brilliant touch – a “promenade” theme (above) that reemerges throughout as a transition amid the changing moods of the various pictures.

The ten pictures Mussorgsky depicts are:

  • a gnome-shaped nutcracker;
  • a troubadour plaintively singing outside an ancient castle;
  • children vigorously playing and quarreling in a park;
  • a lumbering wooden Polish ox-cart;
  • a ballet of peeping chicks as they hatch from their shells;
  • an argument between two Warsaw Jews, one haughty and vain, the other poor and garrulous;
  • shrill women and vendors in a crowded marketplace;
  • the eerie, echoing gloom of catacombs beneath Paris;
  • the hut of a grotesque bone-chomping witch of Russian folklore named Baba Yaga;
  • and a design for an entrance gate to Kiev.

The whole piece for piano.  See if you can tell which pictures are which.

Orchestrated, with the full score:

Just the Baba Yaga section:

The Emerson, Lake and Palmer version:

Daily Listening Assignments ~ July 2

Posted by MaryO on

toccata-d-minor

Johann Sebastian Bach’s towering monument of organ music, with its deep sense of foreboding, will forever be associated with Halloween.

Get a free copy of the sheet music at IMSLP or borrow a copy from the O’Connor Music Studio.  I have this arranged for organ, piano, duet, 2-piano, simplified…

It’s also available in Piano Maestro, Piano Pronto Encore and Coda

If you want this in a book with other Bach transcriptions, amazon has this: Toccata and Fugue in D minor and the Other Bach Transcriptions for Solo Piano, arranged by Ferruccio Busoni.

Here, Virgil Fox performs it on his Allen Digital Touring Organ.

Diane Bish plays the Massey Memorial Organ at the Chautauqua Institution and talks about this instrument.

Animated organ:

Glass harmonica

Accordion

Cartoon:

Daily Listening Assignments ~ July 1

Posted by MaryO on

Today’s piece is the other one of two pieces that are so often played incorrectly that they have the distinction of being banned from competition in Northern Virginia Piano Teacher competitions.

The first was Fur Elise.  This one is Spinning Song by Albert Ellmenreich.  It’s in many, many piano method books.  When I was in 5th or 6th grade, I tore it out of my book, put it in a construction paper cover and played it for some Girl Scout talent show.  I have no idea why I couldn’t leave it in the book.

The left hand is supposed to sound like the foot pumping the wheel to make it move

This is part of a larger work called Musikalische Genrebilder, Op.14 which can be downloaded at IMSLP:

Spinnliedchen (Spinning Song), the best known item from the set, seems to be universally referred to as number four. The announcement of the first edition in Hofmeister’s Monatsberichte lists it as the fifth item. In Schirmer’s 1878 edition (see cover: here) of Op.14 it appears that items two and three were possibly combined into one number (entitled Sorrow and Consolation) so that Spinnliedchen became number four. Perhaps, this is the origin of the re-numbering.

To learn this sheet music, it’s available in Piano Pronto Movement 4 and Alfred Premier Piano Course Book 6

Here’s a sample:

A tutorial

With scrolling sheet music

For organ

How to conduct(?)

While this piece is not usually popular with other instruments, a trumpet quartet gave it a try

The DMS Percussion Ensemble

Singers from the Londonderry Middle School gave it a try:

The first half of this video is flute tuning. After that is a lovely flute duet.

I can’t take any more of these!

Daily Listening Assignments ~ June 29

Posted by MaryO on

 

Today’s assignment is a little different but it shows how determination, hard work, practice and believing in yourself can take you a long way.

Inverary and District Pipe Band didn’t sound so great when they started out but…

Adapted from https://idpb.co.uk/history/

In September 2003, the Inveraray Piping Project was born. With the assistance of local people, Tuesday nights at Inveraray Primary School became the time and venue for weekly piping tuition and practices and the small group began to grow. By May 2004, there were five young pipers and a drummer who remain members to this day.

In 2005, built upon these foundations, Inveraray and District Pipe Band was formed. It competed in its first competition in the Novice Juvenile grade at Cowal Games in August 2005, with borrowed drums and its young members clad in uniforms of various colours.

  • 2006
    • Winner of the overall Scottish award for Best Lottery Funded Project (and a win in the UK-wide “Local Legend” category for Stuart Liddell) in the National Lottery Awards.
    • Prize winner in all five RSPBA major Championships in the Novice Juvenile grade in IDPB’s first full year.
  • 2007
    • Winner of four out of five Novice Juvenile major championships, including the Worlds.
  • 2008
    • Winner of four out of five Juvenile major championships, including the Worlds.
  • 2009
    • Winner of all five major championships in Grade 2.

The Grade 2 band’s success in 2009 meant that it was immediately promoted to Grade 1 for the 2010 season.

The band continues to be a regular prize winner at the major events and a centre of excellence built on strong foundations. The attention to detail and focus on individual and collective playing quality that were a feature of its embryonic beginnings remain to this day in all sections of the band. The current incarnation of IDPB is less parochial- in fact, truly international- with members from several continents. The membership features highly decorated individual performers; graduates of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland; an abundance of capable composers and arrangers, and several performers with a wider musical pedigree than purely piping or drumming.

In 2017 Inveraray and District Pipe Band won the World Pipe Band Championships.  A total of 219 bands including 8,000 pipers from 15 nations took part in the contest, now in its 70th year.

 

Edit!  I posted this at 9:00 am EST (June 30, 2018) and later in the day, Inveraray and District Pipe Band won the Grade One European Pipe Band Championship.

Another Edit! The band won the World Championships for the second time in 2019.

This is Inveraray and District’s performance of the band’s Masterblaster medley which won the band the Grade One European Pipe Band Championship on Saturday 30 June 2018. The event was held in a meticulously prepared, sun-scorched Grant Park. These championships will be moving on to Inverness in 2019 after six very successful years in Forres.

 

Daily Listening Assignments ~ June 28

Posted by MaryO on

Korobeiniki is a nineteenth-century Russian folk song that tells the story of a meeting between a peddler and a girl, describing their haggling over goods in a veiled metaphor for courtship.

Outside Russia, “Korobeiniki” is widely known as the Tetris theme.

Piano duet:

Orchestral version:

For Boomwhackers:

Vocal:

Ragtime:

Balalaika:

Two bassoons:

The Red Army Choir:

Korobeiniki/Tetris is available in Piano Maestro on the iPad and I have several levels of sheet music for anyone who is interested.

Enjoy!