Lydia's Grade Eight: Today we are listening to Wagner's Lohengrin

"Even the feeling of "unremembered pleasure"--for it is possible to have the spring of association touched so lightly that one recovers the feeling of former pleasure without recovering the sensation, or the image, which produced the sensation, but merely just the vague feeling of the pleasure, as when one hears the word Lohengrin and does not wait, as it were, to recover the sensation of musical delight, but just catches a waft of the pleasure which the sensation brought--intangible, indefinite as they are, produce that glow of the heart which warms a good man to 'acts of kindness and of love,' as little, as nameless, and as unremembered as the feelings out of which they spring." ~~ Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children, page 197

Vintage Postcards from Lohengrin! (sample above)

"I just happened to be on the same bus as a party of young German children going back after the performance and they unanimously told their teacher they had enjoyed it and said out loud their favourite moments. More tellingly the teacher told one of her charges how he had shown he could concentrate for over an hour watching an opera and now she wanted him to do that in class. There was a reply from another adult in the party – possibly not an actual colleague – to the effect that perhaps the teacher should learn to sing!" ~~ "Bayreuth Opens Up Wagner to a Younger Audience", by Jim Pritchard, at Seen and Heard International (2014)

Resources:

"Lohengrin," chapter in Stories of Favorite Operas, by Clyde Robert Bulla (free to read online!).  Retold for children.

Daily Telegraph article: "The opera novice: Wagner's Lohengrin," with one or two omissions.  You-tube video of the overture, at that link. You-tube video of Elsa's Procession to the Cathedrral.  And the Wedding March!  This description is interesting too, and goes a little more into the specific songs.


Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin, You-tube link above.  Does this sound familiar?

Many would find this offensive, but the Prelude to Act I was used (most ironically) in a scene from Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator, made in 1940, where the title character dances with a large globe.

It's also interesting to search You-tube for examples of Liszt's piano transcriptions of Wagner's music. We can imagine Mrs. Howard Glover, the first CM Music Appreciation mama, playing it in much the same way for her son.  "Elsa's Procession to the Cathedral" seems popular.

Check these out: family-friendly opera books, free online

Do you want to introduce your children to opera, particularly Richard Wagner, but worry about the often questionable content of the stories?  Clyde Robert Bulla, children's writer of many subjects, came to the rescue half a century ago, and two of his books are available for free on Archive.org.  We have had a copy of his Stories of Favorite Operas for years, and I think Lydia read some of the stories when, even with them family-friendlied up, she was a bit young for some of what is, still, not always meant for the nursery crowd.  Still, with Bulla, you know you are on fairly trustworthy ground; you are not going to get anything beyond general fairy-tales-and-legends sorts of violence and misbehaviour.

So, keeping that in mind, here are the links:

Stories of Favorite Operas (contains several by Wagner)

The Ring and the Fire (Bulla's retelling of Wagner's Ring Cycle operas).

Dollygirl's Grade Seven: School plans for Friday

Friday's school plans for Term Three, Week One:

O Canada, because it's Friday

Basic Bible Studies: read verses together about our adoption into God's family

Hymn: "Children of the Heavenly Father"

Composer Study:  Read about Schubert in History of Music and Boyhood of Great Composers Book One.  Listen to one of the songs mentioned.

French history, begin Chapter 7, narrate.  Find something to draw showing life in the 12th century.  (Listen to some Schubert during drawing time.)

Math:  continue Saxon lesson.

Shakespeare's King John: finish reading Scene One.

"Transcription":  "Choose and transcribe passages (in beautiful writing from Bridges) Poems of To-day, and the other books set..."

Discussion of handicrafts and "extra" subjects this term

Money Matters for Teens workbook, first lesson:  read together and do the assignments for weekend homework.

Return of the King.

Dollygirl's Grade Six: Handel and other things on Thursday

Some of this will be done in the afternoon--it depends on how much we can get finished before lunch.

Old Testament: readings from The Book of Adam to Moses, "with necessary omissions"

Arithmetic:  Clue Finders CD-Rom, or do one puzzle from Arithmecode.

Grammar (30 minutes allowed, but may not take that long): Continue with "Case closed"

French songs, break (30 minutes total).   "Joli Tambour"

History (20 minutes): Story of Greece.  "Pelopidas and Epaminondas"  (Illustrations here.)

Memory work: work on chosen poem

Shakespeare play (30 minutes)

Composer study (begin study of Handel).

1.  General information about Handel  (Boyhoods of Great Composers)

2.  History of "The Harmonious Blacksmith."  "Although the title was supplied by his publisher, not Handel himself, it remains a compelling image - not just as a blacksmith whistling while working, but also as musicians shaping harmonies into works of art. Harmonious Blacksmith also alludes to Pythagoras's ancient discovery of acoustics, as he passed a blacksmith's forge and noticed the higher and lower pitches of smaller and larger hammers striking the anvil."  (From the Harmonious Blacksmith website)  "According to Iamblichus, Pythagoras immediately ran into the forge to investigate the harmony of the hammers....He analyzed the hammers and realized that those that were harmonious with each other had a simple mathematical relationship--their masses were simple ratios or fractions of each other. That is to say that hammers half, two- thirds, or three-quarters the weight of a particular hammer would all generate harmonious sounds. On the other hand, the hammer that was generating disharmony when struck along with any of the other hammers had a weight that bore no simple relationship to the other weights."  (this story found here, along with some neat illustrations)

What about the piece of music itself?  There are several different stories about this, all involving blacksmiths.  Here is one of them:  "The title “Harmonious Blacksmith” was bestowed on the music in the nineteenth century, and a story of its origin claims the piece was a favorite of a William Lintern, a blacksmith apprentice and an amateur musician. He was often heard whistling his favorite piece, Handel’s “Air and Variations”, giving his friends the reason to call him “the harmonious blacksmith”. Lintern later became owner of a music publishing company, the first to publish the piece under The Harmonious Blacksmith title."  (Program notes found here.) 

Pip, the main character in Great Expectations (which we read last year) is fondly given the nickname of Handel by the character Herbert Pocket: "We are so harmonious- and you have been a blacksmith."

3.  Listen to the theme carefully (midi file at the second link given above).

4.  Listen to the whole piece, including the variations.

Composer Study for Wednesday

Gabriel Fauré's Pavane