Music For or About Children and Childhood

[71 dB]

Elgar Wand of Youth, Dream Children and Nursery Suite.

[asin] B000OMCIVI[/asin]

+1

[Cato]

Britten - lots of Britten (all of Britten?)

NOYE'S FLUDDE !


https://www.youtube.com/v/ughJeJ4LJD0

[Mister Sharpe]

Two recordings spring immediately to mind :

[Ken B]

Britten - lots of Britten (all of Britten?)

Ooooooooppoo!

[Ken B]

I'm really seriously going to be the first to mention Orff?

[vandermolen]

A vote from me for Ravel's 'Mother Goose' a charming and delightful work and Elgar's 'Nursery Suite', especially 'The Wagon Passes'. Plus 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice' by Dukas.

The Wagon Passes:
https://youtu.be/97zWoAuNnOc

[ritter]

More stuff from France:

Florent Schmitt's delightful Une semaine du petit elfe Ferme-l'Oeil, Op.58, for piano four hands...
https://www.youtube.com/v/oC1NhcwGo3I

...and expanded into a ballet, Le petit elfe Ferme-l'Oeil, op. 73:
https://www.youtube.com/v/8KdHrjpPSTs

And, of course, from Romania, George Enescu's Impressions d'enfance, op. 28:
https://www.youtube.com/v/IfkDtg44soQ

Regards,

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

There's always Oliver Knussen's Where the Wild Things Are.

[ritter]

And from South America:

Heitor Villa-Lobos's A prole do bebê...

https://www.youtube.com/v/9hBKRv6Usdk

...and Alberto Ginastera's Piezas infantiles:

https://www.youtube.com/v/I2jMLiKETeo

[Karl Henning]

The Michael Jackson of classical music

Pure coincidence that he named a pet hedgehog "Muscles."

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[Cato]

Hey Cato haven't seen you in ages! 

I'm very reluctant on that one, as it's more of an ode to a bunch of his influences at the time (including Stalling, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Ives, Xenakis and some sincere polka and country pastiches added too). I agree though that it is quite a "breezy" piece,  I love it (as you'd know)


But he DOES have an album called (that's right): Music For Children



And I don't quite know exactly what it has to do with children but he did compose a piece in 1996 of the same name (featured on that CD) for violin, piano and percussion. 

Cheers man, good to see you around 

It is the end of the school year, so all kinds of annoying duties are swirling around me.

Check your messages later! 

[Monsieur Croche]

Modest Mussorgsky ~ The Nursery, song cycle

Igor Stravinsky ~ Trois pièces faciles & Cinq pièces faciles, piano four-hands / Pour les cing doigts piano solo.
[Technically, Stravinsky's intended the chorus for the Symphony of Psalms to be all male, i.e. boy trebles.]

Béla Bartók ~ Mikrokosmos, piano

Alexander Tcherepnin ~ Bagatelles, Op.5, piano

Francis Poulenc ~ L'Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant, for narrator and piano (s'wonderful:-)

Robert Muczynski ~ Six Preludes, Op. 6., piano

Octavio Pinto ~ Scenas infantis, piano

Aram Katchaturian ~ The Adventures of Ivan, piano

Englebert Humperdinck ~ Hansel und Gretel

Aaron Copland ~ Down a country Lane, piano / The Second Hurricane, opera for school children.

Benjamin Britten ~ Curlew River about a (lost) child.

Gian-Carlo Menotti ~ Amahl and the Night Visitors

Someone has mentioned Orff; apart from his scads of utility music for children,
his cantata, Der Mond

Toru Takemitsu ~ Piano pieces for children

Michael Colgrass ~ As Quiet As, orchestra
"4th graders was asked by their teacher to complete the phrase, "As Quiet as...". The composer took seven of their answers: A Leaf Turning Colors; An Uninhabited Creek; An Ant Walking; Children sleeping; Time Passing; A Soft Rainfall; and The First Star Coming Out, basing the work on his imagined sounds for each simile/"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtKKoViSP_I

Sofia Gubaidulina ~ Musical Toys, piano

György Kurtág ~ Játékok (Games) several volumes,. piano four-hands and/or solo (includes improvisation, playing with the teacher, other students.)  Wonderful pedagogic volumes of music for kids, listenable for anyone.

[Jo498]

Menotti: Help! Help! The Globolinks!

Dvorak wrote his violin sonatina for his children (around 10-12 at the time).

Schumann has a whole bunch besides Kinderszenen: Album für die Jugend, 3 Sonatas "für die Jugend" op.118  and more.

Brahms has a volume "Volkskinderlieder" (arrangements/settings of popular/traditional children songs, I am not sure how many if any melodies are by Brahms) WoO 31 (a few of which are somewhat familiar to me from my own childhood)

[prémont]

Béla Bartók ~ Mikrokosmos, piano

Why not Bartok: For children?

[Florestan]

Well, as far as I know, the answer is yes for the Mozart works (the opera was for a school play, and the Mass was for the orphans and their new chapel, and apparently the music was sung at the premiere by a choir of orphans conducted by the 12-year old composer)

Fair enough.

[Florestan]

Modest Mussorgsky ~ The Nursery, song cycle

Igor Stravinsky ~ Trois pièces faciles & Cinq pièces faciles, piano four-hands / Pour les cing doigts piano solo.
[Technically, Stravinsky's intended the chorus for the Symphony of Psalms to be all male, i.e. boy trebles.]

Béla Bartók ~ Mikrokosmos, piano

Alexander Tcherepnin ~ Bagatelles, Op.5, piano

Francis Poulenc ~ L'Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant, for narrator and piano (s'wonderful:-)

Robert Muczynski ~ Six Preludes, Op. 6., piano

Octavio Pinto ~ Scenas infantis, piano

Aram Katchaturian ~ The Adventures of Ivan, piano

Englebert Humperdinck ~ Hansel und Gretel

Aaron Copland ~ Down a country Lane, piano / The Second Hurricane, opera for school children.

Benjamin Britten ~ Curlew River about a (lost) child.

Gian-Carlo Menotti ~ Amahl and the Night Visitors

Someone has mentioned Orff; apart from his scads of utility music for children,
his cantata, Der Mond

Toru Takemitsu ~ Piano pieces for children

Michael Colgrass ~ As Quiet As, orchestra
"4th graders was asked by their teacher to complete the phrase, "As Quiet as...". The composer took seven of their answers: A Leaf Turning Colors; An Uninhabited Creek; An Ant Walking; Children sleeping; Time Passing; A Soft Rainfall; and The First Star Coming Out, basing the work on his imagined sounds for each simile/"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtKKoViSP_I

Sofia Gubaidulina~ Musical Toys, piano
yörgy Kurtág ~ Játékok (Games) several volumes,. piano four-hands and/or solo (includes improvisation, playing with the teacher, other students.)  Wonderful pedagogic volumes of music for kids, listenable for anyone.

Menotti: Help! Help! The Globolinks!

Dvorak wrote his violin sonatina for his children (around 10-12 at the time).

Schumann has a whole bunch besides Kinderszenen: Album für die Jugend, 3 Sonatas "für die Jugend" op.118  and more.

Brahms has a volume "Volkskinderlieder" (arrangements/settings of popular/traditional children songs, I am not sure how many if any melodies are by Brahms) WoO 31 (a few of which are somewhat familiar to me from my own childhood)

Good ones, gents! Thank you!

[Ken B]

Off topic but it fits...
I was at the library today. A young girl was there with her mother, she was 8 or 10. She is learning the cello. There was a binder full of CDs, not sure how many but a goodly number, all classical. They were looking through it, and the girl wanted it, so she bought it ($10, a SDCB) with her own money. Quite marvelous.

Music for one child at least!

[Sergeant Rock]

Strauss Schlagobers (Whipped Cream), Op. 70. A ballet in two acts. The story is about a group of children celebrating their confirmation in a Konditorei or Viennese pastry shop, where the confections come to life, with marzipan marches and cocoa dances. Having overindulged, one boy falls ill and hallucinates, leading to the party of Princess Pralinée, a trio of amorous liquors, and a riot of cakes pacified by beer.

Sarge

[NikF]

Strauss Schlagobers (Whipped Cream), Op. 70. A ballet in two acts. The story is about a group of children celebrating their confirmation in a Konditorei or Viennese pastry shop, where the confections come to life, with marzipan marches and cocoa dances. Having overindulged, one boy falls ill and hallucinates, leading to the party of Princess Pralinée, a trio of amorous liquors, and a riot of cakes pacified by beer.

Sarge

Bayer:  Die Puppenfee/The Fairy Doll.

"...a wonderful fairytale, pure Hoffmann" - Alexandre Benois.

Some guy takes his children to a toy shop to buy them a doll. The owner of the shop shows them his stock of mechanical dolls, like a Chinese doll, a Japanese doll, a baby doll, a Spanish doll, a Hungarian(?) a harlequin and also the Fairy Doll, the most special ()
The guy buys the Fairy Doll for his children. For some reason she stays in the shop overnight. When everyone goes to sleep it's the usual Hoffmann stuff and the Fairy Doll comes to life and brings the others to life along with a chess board and toymaking tools and kitchen appliances and they all dance.

The one time I've seen it (think it was a youth ballet production) it was certainly aimed at children and they made up most of the audience.
The pas de trois is especially charming and humourous, but also appealing to adults because they can see how the Fairy Doll is frankly, kind of a teaser.

Here's Lara 'Legs' Lezhnina dancing it at the Mariinsky with two dudes I can't remember the name of.

https://www.youtube.com/v/3lduZ7Zsv8c

Low-res but worth ten minutes of your time. Really, give it a try.

e: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3lduZ7Zsv8c