Rimsky-Korsakov - The Flight of the Bumblebee (Homeschool Music Appreciation)

 

 Chareen and Sue have asked me to post some examples of our children's nature books and I'll go through their journals, today. In the meantime, I thought I'd share some music appreciation that we really enjoyed.

We seem to run on passions, here - we often spend the whole day or a few days immersed in one activity and then we move on to the next passion. For some of us, Tuesday and Wednesday were art and nature days. After that, Thursday was a blogging day for half of the family and a music day for the others.

We often find that a movie, some music or a book will spark a specific interest. This is what happened with The Flight of the Bumblebee. We were listening to it being played, in the car, and we followed up with some computer research that we found really interesting.

At the moment, I've just begun to teach our younger girls to play the piano. My skills are very mediocre but I really enjoy playing. I find it relaxing and the music touches my soul in a similar way to art. Yesterday, I spent such a happy afternoon playing tunes from the Disney movies. The pieces are quite simple and not hugely challenging, but they are still beautiful.

Here's what we found out about The Flight of the Bumblebee, along with a couple of phenomenal performances of it being played - one at unbelievable speed (at the top of the page) and the other by a little boy, on a talent show. Amazing!!!

The Flight of the Bumblebee
The Flight of the Bumblebee was written by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, in 1899-1900, as part of his opera, The Tale of Tsar of Saltan. The bumblebee is, in actual fact, a prince who has been transformed into an insect so that he can fly off to visit his father.

It is the fast pace of the music which has caused its mass appeal. It has been used, at various times, as a theme tune for a radio show, a television show, the movie 'Shine' and as part of a film which contained other compositions by Rimsky-Korsakov, also. The speed of the piece makes it difficult to play and a number of musicians have risen to the challenge by setting world records for the fastest performance of the music on guitar, piano and violin.

John Taylor of Colorado broke the record for the fastest performance on guitar, in 2011, when he played the piece at 600 beats per minute. The fastest violin performance is held by Eric Speed, of Canada, who played the "Flight of the Bumblebee" in 53 seconds, in Montreal, at a comedy festival, in July, 2011. The previous record, from 2010, stood at a little over 1 minute and 3 seconds.

An interesting performance is given in the following YouTube video of Shaun Hern Lee, who played the piece during an Australia's Got Talent audition, at the age of just 7. (Oops, I didn't notice the pole dancer,at the start, when I posted this :-O Might want to fast forward a little :-))

Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov

Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov was born in Russia, in 1844, and died in 1908. He learnt the piano, as a child, but only turned to a musical career after working, for several years, as a naval officer. For a number of years, he retained his position in the army, whilst, at the same time, pursuing his musical dreams. It was, while as a young naval officer in St. Petersburg, that his friends forced him to return to music and finish the symphony he had started. Yet, it was another 8 years, before he relinquished the naval career that he had undertaken in response to his family's fears that music would not provide him with an adequate and secure income. The years he spent at sea provided him with an array of visual memories, which inspired the composition of beautiful musical impressions of the sea, the forest and the sky.

His musical repertoire contains symphonies, opera and songs, and, although most of his music is no longer played, his most famous pieces are still popularly enduring, due to his talent for tone-colour and orchestration. The Flight of the Bumblebee is his most famous composition and is often used by virtuosos to display their distinctive talents, particularly on the violin and the piano.

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NB. Tone-colour relates to the sound of the music, meaning how it sound in terms of the instruments being played and how they are played. Some words used to describe tone-colour include the following:

shimmering, gutteral (for voice), tinkly, mellow, dark, rich, full, resonant, piercing, harsh, light, clear, muddy, whiny, breathy, airy, raspy, metallic, buzzing, sustained, dull, muted, nasal, brassy, reedy, dry, wet, brittle, fragile, wavering, whispy.
(See here)


(See websites: here, here, here and here.)