26-Jan-09 - The Orchestra

This is a story dictated by Liam (5yrs old), after his first trip to the Greenville Symphony Orchestra. He had been begging to "see an orchestra," and I could tell by the way that he was asking what it was and how you played it that he thought it was one instrument that required about 100 people to operate. A few videos on YouTube piqued his interest but also frustrated him with their lack of quality visual explanation. These boys are good about sitting still in church, so in honor of their January/February birthdays, we decided to take them to see the real thing.

The Orchestra

Yesterday I went to see an orchestra. I saw lots of instruments and people. They turned the lights off when they were ready to play, but they left the lights on on the stage so we could see the players better. When they were first about to start, there was a speaker talking. Then the conductor came out and talked into the microphone. Then he turned around and conducted the orchestra.

The music did not sound like I wanted it to. I wanted it to sound like Vivaldi. I like Vivaldi's ["Four Seasons"] tune better. I was fine with this music, but I don't really want to hear it again. I liked the timpani best, and the conductor. The timpani is lots of different drums that make different sounds. The conductor moved his hands to tell the players how to play, and it looked a little bit like dancing. I wish there had been guitars.

I had to go upstairs to get to my seat because we sat in the balcony. The players were far away, so I was not as close as I wanted to be, but I could see the whole orchestra. After the concert, we went to a restaurant to eat yummy pizza for dinner.

The End

I tried to get Liam to describe for me why he liked Vivaldi better than this selection of overtures written for various Shakespeare productions. Granted, I like Vivaldi better. It is ordered and peaceful, even in its intensity. Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev, like the Shakespearean themes they express, are boisterous, passionate, comparatively chaotic. I wanted to see if Liam would express this, so I probed a bit along the emotional line.

"How does Vivaldi's Four Seasons make you feel when you listen to it?" I asked. "Does it make you feel happy?"

"It makes me feel like I like it," he says.

"Well, how did this music make you feel?"

"It made me feel like I wanted to hear Vivaldi."

That's my engineer.