Exploring the Story Within Music

The spring before Miss S. turned three, Luther Vandross’s last great song, “Dance with my Father,” hit the airways.  We heard its introductory bars on every station, in restaurants, stores and office buildings for months . . . and then we would hurriedly change the station or excuse ourselves, as she would, without fail, begin to cry hysterically at the sound of the song. 

My husband and I were really amused by this.  For years she had wailed at the roar of the vacuum cleaner and burst into tears at the piercing shriek of a pressure cooker, but what was it about the swoon of an R and B pop song that left her inconsolable?  Sure, it was a sad song — poignant really, given that the silken voiced Vandross would unexpectedly die so quickly after its release.  But Sona surely didn’t understand the story wove throughout the song . . . and besides, she started to freak out the moment the first bars could be heard on the piano, not when the singer began to sing. 



Listening to music together and imagining  
what stories we hear it telling is a great activity
to build an appreciation of the language arts.



Her sensitivity to it continued for two years, and after Vandross’s death in 2005, I entertained the thought that in her toddlerhood she had somehow preternaturally sensed the singer’s fate, like the fabled bean-sidhe spirits of Irish myth, who would howl wildly to warn their hearers of an upcoming death. But by the time he died, I was more committed to the belief that S. was simply hearing more than just notes—she was listening to the story in the music.

 I figured this out one day when, as we were listening to Puccini’s aria “O Mio Babbino Caro”, she asked me “Mom, what is she singing about?”  

My curiosity about  how she would answer the question was piqued, and I simply turned the question back to her. “What do you imagine she is singing about?”

“I think she is sad because she misses someone she loves.  He’s far away.” she said thoughtfully.

“And who is she telling this to? What is she saying?” I prompted.

She was quiet for a moment.  “She’s talking to herself in her room, saying, ‘I miss you’ and crying.”

“What time of day is it?  What time of day does it seem to be?”

“Nighttime,” she replied. “The moon is out.”

I didn’t bother telling her the “real” back-story (the aria is actually being sung by a character named Lauretta to her father, expressing her fearful plea to be allowed to marry the boy she loves).  The particulars don’t really matter.  .  . Miss S. grasped the longing and the fear expressed in the long, swooning measures at the beginning of the song, a fear which is increasingly at risk of falling into hysteria toward the end of the song, as the prima donna reaches an almost unnaturally high pitch.

If one way of approaching poetry appreciation is by learning about the lyric qualities of language through rhyme games, another way is to actually is to explore the narrative qualities of music.  How do the different components of a musical score create character, develop mood, or imitate landscape — in short, to compose the elements of a story?

   

It's fun to explore this together.  Needless to say, it isn’t necessary to start this sort of enterprise with operatic arias if they’re not your thing.   Listen to Mussgorsky’s "Night on Bald Mountain" together and draw a picture of the story taking place.  Who's there in your child's imagination?  What is taking place?  Describe your own imagination of where the characters, be they human or not, are, and what they are involved in.  Ask kids for details about the setting--what time of day it is, what color the landscape is, what smells are in the air.  They may think you're nuts (as my daughter does half the time) but then they may just love it (as my daughter does the other half of the time)!

After drawing it out and talking about the story you heard in the music, watch that gothic scene in Disney’s Fantasia that 'interprets' the song and compare notes with how you and your children had imagined it. 



Exploring how the Peter and The Wolf
story is told through language and music
helps children explore both forms
of expression.



Or read a version of Peter and the Wolf together, and then listen to a segment of Prokofiev’s score.  Explore what instruments are used to represent each animal in the music.   Following from this, parents can help children explore what instruments they would use to represent the sounds of various creatures (snake/maraca, bee/kazoo, mouse/high octave piano keys, elephant or other large mammal, low octave piano keys, subtly shaking tinfoil/wind through a tree . . . etc.)

Hearing the story in the music informs one’s ability to hear the music in the story.  This is actually a critical skill for poets and other lyrical writers, who often, as Virginia Woolf once wrote of her own experience, must ‘hear’ the lines in their mind before they even realize its time to pick up the pen.