We have a longstanding working relationship with Minnesota Public Radio. We've been partnering with them for many years, creating educational videos that introduce musical concepts and explain abstract ideas. The Class Notes video series has ranged from live action to animation and some even have both!
French composer Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983) was the only female member of "Les Six," a group of composers who worked together in Paris. Her works are distinguished by their use of color--or timbre, as it is known in music--as well as their beauty and unconcealed emotion. This video introduces young students to the concept of timbre through Tailleferre's work Ballade.
To learn a new work of music takes dedication and practice. Dedication and practice in turn help develop what’s known as a musician’s technique—not just fluency with the work itself and its composer’s ideas, but mastery of various musical effects the composer and performer use to express those ideas. Performers who master the technique of a particularly challenging work while also being able play with sensitivity and poetry—with soul—are said to play with virtuosity.
In the early 1780s, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed a serenade later nicknamed “Gran Partita.” The serenade’s sublime third movement, its Adagio, is one of the most beautiful and poignant in all classical music.
The movement also gives each of us a chance to experience for ourselves how music can move us, and how it evokes—and also allows us to express—feelings and ideas if we are attuned to what it has to offer.
