Additional Resources
Opera
Orchestra
The real title for this perennial Mozart favourite is Serenade No. 13 in G, although it’s the piece’s informal title, ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’ that has stuck.
Written when Mozart was just 31 years old, it’s an uplifting piece of music perfect for young listeners and defined by its gloriously melodic strings.
Water Music by George Frederic Handel
Handel’s Water Music is made up of three wonderfully jolly orchestral suites, which are easy on the ear and jauntily life-affirming.
Packed with catchy and famous tunes, each movement is based on a dance style – but it’s Suite No. 1 that is the most popular. In eleven sections, it begins with a beautiful French-style Ouverture, continues through a jaunty ‘Bourée’, a stately ‘Minuet’, and ends with the grand ‘Alla Hornpipe’.
The Great Escape by Elmer Bernstein
Elmer Bernstein’s jaunty, triumphant, catchy and extremely hummable theme is the perfect accompaniment to this Second World War film, in which Steve McQueen, James Garner and Richard Attenborough mastermind a mass escape from a German prisoner of war camp.
Its jolly rhythm and ear-wormy theme make this soundtrack a perennial favourite with young listeners.
Overture to Carmen by Georges Bizet
Bizet’s second opera is so packed full of memorable melodies that it’s guaranteed an almost permanent position as the world’s most popular and frequently performed opera.
The show’s opening number is feverish and exciting, with an exhilarating melody in the strings and a persistently rhythmic accompaniment in the brass and timpani sections. If this barnstorming Prélude isn’t stuck in you and your child’s head yet, it will be now…
Information from: https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/best-classical-music-for-kids/
The Syncopated Clock by Leroy Anderson
Super catchy and fun to listen to while performing the beats like a clock.
Ballet
In Swan Lake, Prince Siegfried, a hunter, sees an amazing swan. As he takes aim to shoot, the swan turns into a beautiful woman named Odette. She tells the prince that she is a princess who has come under the spell of an evil sorcerer. During the day she must be a swan and swim in a lake of tears. At night she is allowed to be a human again. The spell can only be broken if a virgin prince swears eternal fidelity to her. She tells Prince Siegfried, who happens to be a virgin prince, that if he refuses her she must remain a swan forever.
Prince Siegfried falls madly in love with Odette. However, through a spell by the evil sorcerer, he accidentally proposes to another woman at a party, believing that the woman is really Odette. Princess Odette feels doomed. She threatens to kill herself and throws herself into the lake. The Prince feels terribly sorry and throws himself into the lake with her. In an incredibly touching moment, the two are transformed into lovers in the afterlife.
The Nutcracker by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
The ballet centers around a young girl named Clara who receives a toy nutcracker from her uncle. She falls asleep and is transported to a magical wonderland where she meets her handsome prince.
Whipped Cream by Richard Strauss
Commercial for Whipped Cream - (It's all I could find)
The story unfolds in a beautiful, rosy pink, Old World confectionery shop, where a Boy and his friends have just come to celebrate by gorging on sweet treats after their first communion. But the Boy overdoses on whipped cream and lands in the hospital where a fear-inducing doctor and corps de ballet of nurses inject him with giant syringes and he falls into a combination of fantastical sweet dreams and nightmares. He also is introduced to his “first love” experience.
Songs to learn other subjects