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Photos Kaimi Rose Lum
Music instructor Mary Abt lends some assistance to kid composers Michael Horton and Chris Costa. |
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“Composing Kids” coordinator George Scharr takes votes from fifth and sixth graders on the melody of choice for their symphony’s third movement. |
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Truro students are learning to
‘build’ a symphony
Kaimi Rose Lum
BANNER STAFF
Fascinating rhythms have got them on the go at Truro Central School, where talented fifth and sixth graders, under the tutelage of professional musician George Scharr, are hastening to complete their very own, original, four-part symphony.
The pressure is real: on April 26, 2005, the Cape Symphony Orchestra will take the children’s score and play it to an audience of thousands at Barnstable High School. So on Tuesday morning this week, the young composers faced their xylophones with grave looks. The assignment? Write two melodies for the third movement — a dance movement with a disco twist.
“One melody should be syncopated, and the other I would prefer not be syncopated,” said Scharr. Use a C major scale, any series of notes, he told them. Remember where the half-steps are. “You have about 12 to 14 minutes to compose.”
Nerve-wracking? “Yes,” said Chris Costa, a fifth grader. “But it’ll be a lot of fun.”
“I can’t hear myself think!” declared Marina Wells as 20 pairs of hammers began tapping away at the xylophones.
Tuesday’s was the 12th of about 18 classes coordinated by Scharr, education director for the Cape Symphony Orchestra (and a bass trombonist by trade), and Truro Central School music teacher Mary Abt. The program, called “Composing Kids” and funded almost entirely by CSO, began in early November with lessons in the history of the symphony, a primer on the various instruments and families of instruments in the orchestra, and a look at how different keys, tempos and tone colors in music create different emotions.
They also talked about structure.
“We liken the symphony to a building,” Scharr said in an interview before class. “The architect has to draw the building and design it, so it’s strong, it doesn’t blow over in a storm. It has to stand up. And the symphony has to stand up.”
Once the students understood the basic form, they set about the task of composing different themes, or motives, to layer into their music. To do that, they needed a story. It took them three classes, Scharr said, to craft a compelling narrative that takes the audience on a four-part musical journey spelled out in the four movements of a classical, sonata-form symphony.
It goes like this: A girl and a boy named June and August are banished by their mother to the attic one day, where they discover a wind-up toy (prelude). When they turn the key in the toy, they are suddenly transported to the year 1,500,000 BC They are chased by a caveman (first movement). Then they turn the key in the toy again and are whisked to the last scene of “Romeo and Juliet” (second movement), and when the tragedy is finished the time machine deposits them on a disco-dance floor in the 1970s, where the children find themselves in a dance contest with their parents (third movement). Finally, the time machine takes them to the year 8,088 (fourth movement). The details of that last chapter have yet to be worked out.
“We’re now in the process of plugging in various melodies into their various subject matter,” Scharr said. At the end of each class, he takes home the melodies the students have composed and voted on and synthesizes them into symphonic form using a computer program called “Finale.” The kids get to review Scharr’s work, which he records and plays back for them. They decide, for instance, whether or not they like certain instruments for certain themes.
The finale for the kids is really the day when they get to see their chef d’oeuvre performed by a full-fledged orchestra. In April, CSO will perform the symphony for 2,800 third, fourth and fifth graders from public schools in towns across Cape Cod, including Falmouth, Barnstable, Harwich, Chatham and Provincetown. Flashing on the wall above the orchestra will be artwork illustrating the symphony’s story, which will be created by students from the same schools, who will receive copies of the storyline in the next month or so.
There will even be special effects — a giant disco ball, for example, during the third movement.
Best of all, Scharr said, the composing kids from Truro get to sit in the orchestra while their symphony is being played. Each of the students, all of whom are band players, sits with his or her corresponding instrument.
“For these kids to hear it in the orchestra — it’s a thrill,” Scharr said. “I have a tear in my eye.”
“Composing Kids” was founded in 2002 by Cape Symphony Music Works. Each year, a school on Cape Cod is selected to participate in the program, and CSO, through grants from various local organizations, pays for all the expenses associated with it. (This year, the Cape Cod Five charitable trust is providing the funding.) The only cost that’s not covered is the cost of transporting the kids on buses to the April 26 performance in Barnstable.
So far, Truro is the only town on the Outer Cape to participate. Previous “Composing Kids” included grade-schoolers from Sandwich and Falmouth.
The program is especially valuable, school administrators say, in light of the recent budget cutbacks that have short-shrifted the art and music curriculum in local schools. Brian Davis, principal of Truro Central School, said that the music classes have been pushed to the margins of the school day. And Scharr pointed out that just two years ago he had more than an hour to spend per week with “Composing Kids.” Now he contends with a scant 40-minute slot each Tuesday with Truro’s fifth and sixth graders.
Still, he confesses to having “the best job on Cape Cod.” One year, he said, he was rewarded by seeing his young composers receive a standing ovation at the end of the April performance.
“It lights a passion at an early stage,” he said. “This is the first exposure that these kids have to the symphony orchestra, and we’re trying to make it as exciting as possible.”
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Dec 16th, 2004