Children’s Concert: ‘Peter and the Wolf’ & ‘Star Wars’ Program Notes
Concert info: https://philharmonianw.org/childrens-concert-24/
A Personal Prelude
At the age of ten, my 5th-grade public school music teacher played Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf for our class and held up flash cards with the instrument associated with each character as it was played. I was enchanted and distinctly remember going home and announcing to my parents, “I want to play the cat!” I’m not even sure I understood that what I was asking was to play the clarinet, a difficult woodwind instrument to take on at a young age. Since then, the clarinet has been my constant companion and the vehicle by which I became a professional musician. All because of a great music teacher and Peter’s slinking cat! (Three cheers for keeping music in public schools!)
Several months after that special day in music class, with a few clarinet lessons now under my belt, I purchased a sheet music book at my local music store (three more cheers for local music stores!) called Movie Music for Clarinet. How delighted I was to be able to learn many of the well-known melodies from John Williams’ Star Wars and other gems from movies I loved. I practiced diligently for weeks leading up to a holiday party my parents were hosting and performed “The Imperial March” in front of my first real audience. I flubbed a few notes, squawked a few times, and ran out of breath by the end, but they clapped for me and I got my first taste of sharing music with a live audience. I was smitten.
So you can see that the music on today’s program is deeply personal to me. Not only were Peter and the Wolf and the music from Star Wars elemental in my musical education, they are also well constructed compositions that put me in touch with great melodies, complex rhythms, and imaginative orchestration. Whether you are a parent, grandparent, caregiver, or young person reading these notes, I want to bring our collective focus on how the music of today’s program, chosen so thoughtfully by Philharmonia Northwest’s Artistic Director, Michael Wheatley, can be our guide on a journey of musical discovery.
John Williams: Music from Star Wars
Film music plays an essential role in our lives. Whether we recognize it or not, the music that accompanies films, television, even commercials, not only becomes a soundtrack to our lives, but actually teaches us, often subliminally, how music functions. Because most film music is based in Western musical language, the reinforcement of basic melodic shapes, harmonic cadences, and basic rhythms are transmitted to us through aural osmosis from an early age. Even if you’ve never studied a musical instrument, you have a sonic understanding of some of music’s elemental “rules” through the film music you have been exposed to throughout your life. Through this concept, John Williams is not only one of the most successful and prolific composers of our time, but also one of our greatest musical educators.
There’s nothing quite like that powerful, hair-raising opening chord of The Force Awakens, which has thrilled audiences for over 40 years. As the chord decays, it leads to a melange of soundscapes that offers deep musical content and context. In the realm of content, Williams is a master of writing for brass instruments, exploiting their ability to sound heroic at times, menacing the next, and most often adding to the rhythmic complexity of the music. Additionally, Williams is one of the great melody writers of our time with many of the themes we hear today not only intimately tied to specific characters but also engaging wide harmonic and modal landscapes that sound appropriately “other worldly,” as if we had never heard a musical vocabulary quite like the one we encounter in Star Wars.
For all of his innovation, it is John Williams’ ability to immerse himself in the great tradition of opera and classical composers that has made his music endure. He borrows graciously from Wagner, Brahms, Mahler, and others but always does so in a way that celebrates those composer’s musical languages rather than merely mimicking them. In this way, I believe Williams fulfills Stravinky’s adage that, while all composers borrow, it is a great composer that gives back with interest. One of the ways Williams gives back to the tradition—connected to my comment about his melody writing above—is the concept of leitmotif, a fancy term simply meaning a recurring musical theme connected to a specific character or concept. There is no better example of this than the melodies of “The Empire Strikes Back.” The forlorn, longing sound of Luke’s sojourn with his own fears, the love theme that develops between Han and Princess Leia, and, of course, the menacing sound of Darth Vader’s “Imperial March,” which I was so proud to learn as a young clarinetist. These fantastic themes that we all know and love are in the great leitmotif tradition of opera composers who created similar themes connected to specific characters.
Sergei Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf, Op. 67
First conceived of as a “symphonic tale for children,” Prokofiev’s beloved Peter and the Wolf is performed at today’s concert in much the same way as it was premiered in Moscow in 1936. This is likely because Prokofiev had so much influence on each detail of the work; it is true with the music, of course, but also the libretto (story) since he took over the writing when an initial draft from a local author was not to his liking. At its heart, Peter and the Wolf is a simple story of a boy thinking quickly to care for those around him, yet the tale also explores common themes of Russian literature including man versus nature, idyllic rural life, and new, Revolutionary ideas (Peter’s) winning out over older ones (Grandfather).
At the core of Peter and the Wolf are the seven themes, or leitmotifs, which make up the work: the flute representing the bird, the oboe representing the duck, the clarinet representing the cat (three more cheers for the cat and the clarinet!), the bassoon representing the grandfather, the French horns representing the wolf, the trumpet and drums representing the hunters, and the strings representing the young boy Peter. Furthermore, each of these themes is set in a different tonal center and they explore varying types of musical sensibilities in articulation, range, rhythm, and scope. In this way, much like John Williams, Prokofiev is offering us musical insights into how instruments, tonality, harmony, and rhythm function, without us ever realizing we’re being educated. While it’s tempting to pick out my favorite leitmotif and dissect it for you––and you might have a guess which is my favorite––I would encourage listeners to pay attention to the ways the themes intersect and flow throughout the work. This is Prokofiev at the height of his powers as he sonically depicts the development of the story through the manipulation of musical form.
Today’s narrator, award-winning radio host Lisa Bergman, will be known to many in the audience, if not by face than by voice, due to her many years at Classical KING FM. Lisa has her work cut out for her as Peter and the Wolf has been recorded 89 times to date with many famous narrators including Eleanor Roosevelt, Leonard Bernstein, Sting, David Bowie, and Sophia Loren to name only a few. Connecting all of our music today, one of the most celebrated of the recordings was from 1953 with narration by a young Alec Guiness, who would later go on to star as Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars. In addition to the many recordings, Peter and the Wolf has also been made into a major Disney film, adapted into many (many!) picture books, and transformed into several ballet and modern dance interpretations. When a work of art is adapted and shared as many times as Peter and the Wolf, it is an indication of how good the work is at its core and a testimony to the gift Sergei Prokofiev gave to us so many years ago.
An Encouraging Postlude
Enjoy the great music on today’s program but don’t let it stop here in beautiful Town Hall. I encourage you to bring the music back home. Start by listening to John Williams’ magnificent Star Wars soundtrack and acting out your memory of the films, whether that was from two years ago or 40. Pick up a great recording or book adaptation of Peter and the Wolf with the narrator of your choice (over 80!) and follow along with the story, getting to know how each instrument sounds and behaves. Perhaps, like me, whether you are 10 years old or 60 years old, you’ll be inspired by one of the instruments you hear in Peter and the Wolf and learn to play it. (You can leave running out of breath at the holiday party out of the equation if you’d like.)
James Falzone
Dean and Professor of Music
Cornish College of the Arts