Could I pick your classical brains please?

[Guest]

Hello,

I am a second year mature student studying towards becoming a primary teacher. As part of a creative arts module I have to research poetry, artwork and music around a theme educationally of interest to young children (with a view to a day trip). I have chosen 'the woods', and so am basing this portfolio on a field trip to Puzzle Wood http://www.puzzlewood.net/thewood.htm . Without waffling on here too much, I was wondering whether anyone here would be kind enough to help me find some classical music that evokes the feels, sounds and atmosphere of being in a wood or forest? Any help gratefully received.

Many thanks in advance,

K

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

For a "chilly" evocation (probably more suitable for Yrs 5&6) there's Sibelius' Tapiola (the name of the Norse god of the forests).

Wagner's Forest Murmurs from Seigfried is readilly available as an orchestral piece (the sounds emerging from a forest when you stop and listen).

And From Bohemia's Woods and Forests by Smetana (part of the orchestral cycle Ma Vlast - "My Country" - might also be useful: the more famous Vltava from the same cycle also has a "woody" bit as the river flows through a wood.

Hope this is of some use.

Best Wishes.

[Dave2002]

Hello,

I am a second year mature student studying towards becoming a primary teacher. As part of a creative arts module I have to research poetry, artwork and music around a theme educationally of interest to young children (with a view to a day trip). I have chosen 'the woods', and so am basing this portfolio on a field trip to Puzzle Wood http://www.puzzlewood.net/thewood.htm . Without waffling on here too much, I was wondering whether anyone here would be kind enough to help me find some classical music that evokes the feels, sounds and atmosphere of being in a wood or forest? Any help gratefully received.

Many thanks in advance,

K

"Evoking feelings of" - pretty subjective stuff. Some, such as Stravinsky, seemed to believe that music could only be abstract.

I think some Sibelius, maybe Tapiola, could be taken to evoke feelings, though perhaps not woods as you'd expect them to be. Scandinavian woods can be scary places, and Tapiola may reflect that.

Bax wrote a piece called the Happy Forest, though whether it is in anyway a representation of happiness or a forest I don't
know.

Smetana's piece "From Bohemia's woods and fields" might be programmatic. It's one of the pieces from Ma Vlast. Vltava is the most well known.

I think one of Dvorak's symphonic poems has a representation of a prince and his followers riding through a forest -perhaps Zlatý kolovrat (The Golden Spinning-Wheel)

Does any of that help?

[mercia]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08vTtu4pmjk

nice pictures, anyway !

Puzzlewood looks nice

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abuEGBa-C4Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZYmFWcHdB4

[amateur51]

May I suggest also the first movement of Beethoven symphony no 6 Pastoral rather well descibed here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._6_%28Beethoven%29

Also Ravel conjours up the sounds of daybreak & sunrise at the start of his suite Daphnis & Chloe :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzwHjEOwVno

Good luck with your module

[Serial_Apologist]

Bax's symphonic poem "November Woods" besides being prefiguratively seasonal for your project, is easily available, and nicely tempestuous, if that is what you are after, or one aspect of it.

Best of luck!

S-A

[french frank]

Perhaps the Scherzo from Mendelssohn's incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream. It has the slightly spooky feel of the woodland at night (not too scary though).

[Dave2002]

Isn't Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf set on the edge of a forest? Could well have been written for a similar audience. Winter Bonfire might also keep the out of doors feel.

[Chris Newman]

Hi Trillion77,
Welcome aboard.

A piece of music I found that worked extremely well in drama lessons was the opening of Mahler's First Symphony in the first movement (up to the point when the first big tune tip toes in. "Ging heut Morgen ubers feld" if you know the song Mahler reuses.) The whistling strings and distant fanfares conjure up strong feelings of nature doing things. After working in class lessons on various aspects of woods, including some good bits of woodland literature*, tell them they are to devise playlets in groups (of about 6 is ideal) set in woods and that you are going to play a piece of music that can mean anything they like to suggest the mood and action. Do not tell them what the music suggests to you. Leave them to get on with it. Best still get them to show their playlets in a woodland clearing. You will be amazed what they turn up with. Give them the choice to act with or without the music. Their imagination is enough.

*Plenty in Brothers Grimm, Fairy Tales, Roald Dahl's spoofs.

[Suffolkcoastal]

Two other Bax works, the Tale the Pine Trees Knew and Spring Fire which has a 'wooded' programme. Isn't the familiar Prelude de l'apres midi d'un faune supposed to be centered around a forest glade? How about Respighi's Pines of Rome, not exactly a wood or forest I know.

[EdgeleyRob]

Schumann / Waldszenen ?

[salymap]

The Teddy Bears' Picnic [sung version] might amuse the little ones at the end of more serious pieces.

It certainly became useful to the BBC over the years!

[MickyD]

The first movement of Chabrier's Suite Pastorale would be nice.

[Richard Tarleton]

For what it's worth - perhaps not for your purposes, but....

Whilst not being onomatopaeic in the manner of most of the above, there are some great Elizabethan ballads on a woodland theme. The greenwood had strong associations for the Elizabethan balladeers - I see your project is set in the Forest of Dean, one of the last large remaining areas of ancient woodland. Many of the ballads admittedly look on the woods as a place to tempt young ladies to have your wicked way with them as well as being the hideout of Robyn (who is to the greenwood gone). But I'll mention (if you can get hold of a copy of Nigel North's lute CD "Go from my window" - Linn Records CKD 176) and have a listen to "Robyn", "The leaves be greene" and especially "The woods so wild" - the opening line of which is "Will yow walk the woods so wilde". Another version of The Woods so Wild is to be found in William Byrd's "My Ladye Nevell's Booke" for virginals/harpsichord - cracking version of this on a 3 CD set on Naxos 8.570139-41.

These are purely instrumental, no singing!

[mercia]

wrong end of the year, however .......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHaZ0rxdxnI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVq4fBFfBD4