MUSICAL STORIES

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"There is only one goal, unique and clear, in music education, and that is for the child to love music. The more he understands her, the closer he'll be to her and the more he'll love her."

Violeta Hemsy de Gainza

With this quote from the Argentinean musical pedagogue Violeta Hemsy de Gainza I begin this writing about musical stories, because as a musician and music teacher I believe that music is magic, it is simple and complex at the same time, that without knowing why, not only children can be amazed by a song without blinking, but we can all fall into raptures with a musical piece that touches our hearts, moves us and transports us to places that do not exist in reality, only in our imagination. That is why we teachers must take full advantage of this fact to be able to communicate and transmit to children a whole culture and a series of sensations and emotions that only music can produce.

With music we can introduce our students to the world of fantasy and expression. When you listen to a short piece of music, your mind can travel to a thousand magical places and your body can vibrate and feel the need to express what you hear, an expression that will possibly manifest itself in movement. In fact, dance and rhythm become elements directly related to music.

Thus, it can be said that four fundamental elements in the area of musical language and expression are derived from this: song, hearing, dance and rhythm. Therefore, one of the most attractive and playful ways to engage children in the appreciation of music is to use the story as a starting point to develop a series of activities for children to have a pleasant time and learn with music.

In childhood, imagination, creativity and curiosity are qualities that are linked, and it is important to encourage them to enrich and preserve them. One of the possibilities to stimulate them is through literature, by providing an encounter with knowledge, with the perception of the senses and with the experience of different feelings. According to the author of books on reading and literature Patricia Abril, the following is quoted: "Stories are the language that children understand best, because they are their best affective map, let us allow them to live them, talk about them, draw them, represent them".

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The musical tale represents a chance for children to develop meaningful learning and enjoy an integrated artistic experience, involving literature, music, movement, drama, dance, creative play and visual arts.

There are countless musical works based on stories that we can use in the musical classroom with the children where the different forms of expression mentioned in the previous paragraph are included. We can use them in such a way that children are the spectators and listeners of musical stories or that they themselves are the protagonists and creators of stories and music. In music, articulated qualities of sonority, timbre, tone, intensity, duration and rhythm will be used, as well as in the performing arts through the combination of elements of body gesture, voice and space. In the same way, the plastic is created by means of the drawing's expression elements such as line, colour, value and text.

According to Palacios (2000), the story and the music are totally similar, in that they are related:

-They represent experiences that bring joy, complacency and are at the same time educational.

-They allow us to observe things both in their unity and in their parts.

-The effect of enchantment that it produces in the spectators, allows the formation of habits of attention, concentration, reflection and participation.

-The narration of the story and the musical hearing, propitiate in those who listen, a magical atmosphere in time and space, that encourages the fantasy when the limits of the imagination are extended.

Through musical stories (in the musical area) we stimulate and sensitize children to the understanding of music, to its study as a discipline, to feel, detail and discriminate each sound heard regardless of its source. On the other hand, they have a purpose and a socio-emotional, cognitive and psychological character in the child, which stand out among them:

-Body work in relation to oneself, to other people, to living beings and to objects in one's environment.

- The expressive capacity to improve the communication of their inner and outer world and therefore a positive interaction between their peers and adults.

-The development of sensitive and creative beings who respect the differences of their companions.

-The creation of common projects, the need to collaborate and the pleasure of sharing as a group.

-The stimulation of individual creativity, when manipulating musical instruments or objects, when experiencing expressive body movements or sounds, when fantasizing about a story, or when improvising a small melody.

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Methodological strategies for making a musical story (according to Consuelo Arguedas)

1. It is necessary to start the activity by motivating the children about the activity to be carried out. It can be through dialogue, or by watching a video where children participate in the editing of a musical story.

2. Sharing the story to be used. You can use fairy tales, from the classical repertoire or others, but it is more satisfactory that they and they jointly develop their own story, with their characters and different situations, because it achieves a greater interiorization of it.

3. Choice of onomatopoeic sounds, sounds of objects or musical instruments, which will form part of the sound environment, to highlight important moments in history.

4. Plastic arts are incorporated into the creative process; each child represents the characters or situations in the story that caught their attention. This activity also serves to evaluate the assimilation of the story's content.

5. Short musical works are selected that allow us to relate the events or characters of the story with the characteristics of timbre, speed, intensity or character of the melodies.

6. Improvisation of songs that have texts related to the plot.

7. Movements, gestures, rounds, games or dances are performed.

8. The scenery of the musical story can be created jointly by the children and the teacher, who becomes the person who guides the process, not the creator par excellence. It is important to avoid over-decoration, as it can become a distraction for the spectators.

9. Realization of the musical story integrating the previous activities.

Here is a list and synopsis of some universal music-literary works and Venezuelan composers (some of which I had the joy of playing with the Orquesta Sinfónica de los Llanos), which you can take advantage of with your students, children and anyone who loves music and this type of work.

-Peter and the Wolf:

A musical tale written by Serguei Prokofiev in 1936. The purpose of the play is to allow children to discover the instruments of an orchestra, where each character and action is illustrated and played by the instruments. In the following way the composer presents and characterizes the characters with the instruments: Pedro: String quartet, The Bird: transverse flute, The Duck: oboe, The Cat: clarinet, The Wolf: horns, The Grandfather: bassoon, The hunters: wood-metal winds.

- The Nutcracker:

A story written by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffman in 1816, in which the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed the music and the choreographers Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, based on the adaptation of the story by Alejandro Dumas (The Tale of the Nutcracker) did what we now know as the Nutcracker Ballet.

-The Little Mermaid:

A symphonic suite in three movements (premiered in Vienna in 1905 with Schönberg's Pelleas und Melisande) is the work of the Austrian Alexander von Zemlinsky and is an evocation rather than an illustration, of the story of the little mermaid who yearns to become a woman in order to conquer the prince she herself has saved from a shipwreck (the melody of the violin at the beginning of the play obviously represents the mermaid in the depths of the ocean, and the storm and the shipwreck)

-The Story of a Soldier:

A work composed by Igor Stravinsky in 1918 to accompany the performance of a fantastic tale by the poet Ferdinand Ramuz, whose characters are a soldier and the devil. His interpretation is through a narrator and an orchestra made up of clarinet, bassoon, violin, double bass, trombone, percussion and trumpet. There is the Spanish version by the Venezuelan playwright José Ignacio Cabrujas and another one by the Portugueseño writer Tomás Jurado Zabala.

-Sheherazade:

is an orchestral suite from 1888 composed by Rimsky Korsakov, inspired by The Thousand and One Nights.

-My mother the Goose:

Piece written in 1908 by the French composer Maurice Ravel in which he wanted to evoke the world of dreams and childhood stories.

-Piccolo, Saxo y compañía:

A work composed in 1957 by the French composer André Popp and the writer Jean Broussolle, when Popp received an assignment from Philips Discos to create a symphonic work aimed at introducing children to classical music. These composers created the musical tale through a small story of a large orchestra with which they tried to show the children, in a friendly and attractive way, the different timbres and instrumental families that make up the symphony orchestra.

-The Planets:

Work composed by the Englishman Gustav Holst. This work, which was initially written for two pianos, was later adapted for symphonic orchestra and structured in seven movements, each one dedicated to a different planet. Thus the movements that make up the work are: Mars, the one that brings war. Venus, the one who brings peace. Mercury, the winged messenger. Jupiter, the one who brings joy. Saturn, the one who brings old age. Uranus, the magician. Neptune, the mystic.

-"The Firebird", "Petruchka" y "Pulcinella"

by Igor Stravinsky

WORKS BY VENEZUELAN COMPOSERS AND MUSICIANS:

-Conny Méndez:

composer of the musical tale "Oración Ratona", which was popularized by the singer Cecilia Tood.

-Antonio Estévez

: famous composer of the symphonic poem "La Cantata Criolla", a work of musical nationalism born from the poem "Florentino y El Diablo" by Alberto Arvelo Torrealba.

-Adolfo Cardozo:

Composer of La Doctora gallina, an ecological songbook, which is a strategy for environmental education based on traditional popular music and children's literature, where it gives the opportunity for each song to be dramatized with a pedagogical purpose for environmental conservation.

-Serenata Guayanesa:

group that has composed a series of children's songs and musical stories such as Pulga y el Piojo, A la Una, among others.

-Vicente Emilio Sojo:

composer who has left us an important legacy in Venezuelan children's music. Among the musical stories, they stand out: El Gorgojo, El tuqueque, Himeneo, La muñeca de trapo, Paisaje, among others.

-Simón Díaz:

our famous musician, composer and performer who left us an endless number of songs and who placed the Tone as a musical genre. I propose the music of Simón Díaz for the use that should be given to the lyrics and music to create stories about them.

-Fanny Fuget:

Teacher, poet, singer-songwriter, dedicated to the entertainment of children and adults using storytelling, music, theatre, puppets and other disciplines for educational purposes. It has a children's record entitled "Jugué.... I counted...Let's sing."

-Ane Rodríguez:

Author of the children's book "El Sueño de la vaca". He recounts the songs of Simón Díaz in which he tells the children in an entertaining way using the most representative characters of his songs.

-Lourdes Ledezma:

Author of "La Canción Ecológica" (The Ecological Song), a book that deals with songs and chants with ecological themes.

-Aquiles Baez:

Musician and composer, author of a very peculiar work entitled "A Christmas Carol".

References:

-Consuelo Arguedas. Musical stories for the little ones.2006

-Patricia Abril. Twelve proposals for the promotion of reading. Children's and Young Adult Literature Notebooks (2012)

-Palacios, F. School concerts. Spain: Gran Canaria Philharmonic Orchestra Foundation. Pedagogical Department. Workbooks No.6.(2000)