First of all let me say sorry for the recent interruption to this blog – life can be unpredictable at times. Hopefully from now things will return to normal...
I have blogged before about the fantastic selection of children’s music available on eMusic and wanted to share with you a beautiful album I downloaded for my daughter recently.
Song of the Unicorn is one of the many fabulous albums available in the Classical Kids series. It tells the story of a young prince (Owen) and princess (Megan) sent on a mission to find a unicorn to cure their mother’s illness. Set in medieval times, characters include Merlin the Wizard and King Arthur. Combining fact and fantasy, the music reflects the renaissance period and the story includes a discussion about the birth of music.
Merlin talks about notes being born of silence and carried on the wind on the island of Atlantis 10,000 years earlier and how the people played their pipes to celebrate the harvest. With a volcanic eruption the city of Atlantis is sunk beneath the sea and for a thousand years music lived a half life before monks in monasteries began to chant and tried to write down the notes to their songs. He then talks of travelling musicians bringing new instruments from far away lands – Lutes from Asia, Pipes from Africa and the Harp from Europe and how music was now ready to move into the future. He talks of the future and how the shadows in his cave represent the cello, violin, clarinet, oboe and trombone which will not be heard for another 1000 years.
Megan is given the task of determining the future of music with Merlin stating: “If you wish to change the future you must foretell it.”Megan must reveal the unicorn song to save her mother and as she starts to play her Lute and begins to imagine, she succeeds by evoking what we now refer to as orchestral music. Merlin wonders how a child could dream such beauty and says that when they hear that music again they will know that they have cured their mother’s illness. They must find a unicorn but the unicorn will only approach a child who is pure of heart and sitting in an open field singing.
Megan and Own then travel to the island of Avalon to find the unicorns and are assisted by King Arthur who warns them of his sister Morgan. While waiting for the boat to take them over to the island Megan plays her Lute again, this time singing songs about their travels and how she wishes to be back at home in the kingdom. Morgan, having tried but failed to catch a unicorn in the past and desperate for one of their magic horns, tricks Megan and Owen by saying that she is the only one that can make their mother better and that she will only do so if they bring a unicorn to her.
Megan succeeds in drawing the unicorn close to her but Morgan’s archers are waiting by and shoot arrows at the unicorn – these are magically diverted to part the sky and Megan and the unicorn are saved. Megan then says to the unicorn that the only thing she can give it is freedom and with that the unicorn touches its horn on her instrument and on her necklace, and the beautiful music that she imagined in Merlin’s cave starts to play again. Later they return to the castle to find their mother has been cured and she tells them of her dream about two children and a unicorn.
This story and music are both beautiful and this is an album my daughter and I will cherish forever, however we understand the message from this story on different levels. I particularly like the idea of the birth of music from silence and the evolution it takes over time and under differing conditions and influences. I also very much appreciate the notion that the future of music is in the hands of the children and that without the ability and desire to imagine the future all we have is the present and the past.
The magic unicorn can also take on a representative form for me as I imagine that its desire to allow music to move into the future takes place only once it has been freed. Morgan, with her deception and motivation to kill the unicorn, could some ways be symbolic of the current regulatory climate music faces today, paralleling the desire to keep the magic of music as private property for the purposes of personal gain. Like much of culture, these symbols and meanings are a matter of personal interpretation.
From an educational point of view this CD, like all of those we have listened to so far in this series, is fantastic. The layering of an interesting story with periodic music educates, illustrates and entices young people in a way that is in itself a form of magic. On one level my daughter hears a story about two children, but underneath it there is the history of music presented in an effortless and enjoyable way. Megan acts also as a role model in some respects, not just because of the purity of her heart, but to show children that making music is beautiful, a way of connecting with people, expressing emotions and changing the world.
I have blogged before about the fantastic selection of children’s music available on eMusic and wanted to share with you a beautiful album I downloaded for my daughter recently.
Song of the Unicorn is one of the many fabulous albums available in the Classical Kids series. It tells the story of a young prince (Owen) and princess (Megan) sent on a mission to find a unicorn to cure their mother’s illness. Set in medieval times, characters include Merlin the Wizard and King Arthur. Combining fact and fantasy, the music reflects the renaissance period and the story includes a discussion about the birth of music.
Merlin talks about notes being born of silence and carried on the wind on the island of Atlantis 10,000 years earlier and how the people played their pipes to celebrate the harvest. With a volcanic eruption the city of Atlantis is sunk beneath the sea and for a thousand years music lived a half life before monks in monasteries began to chant and tried to write down the notes to their songs. He then talks of travelling musicians bringing new instruments from far away lands – Lutes from Asia, Pipes from Africa and the Harp from Europe and how music was now ready to move into the future. He talks of the future and how the shadows in his cave represent the cello, violin, clarinet, oboe and trombone which will not be heard for another 1000 years.
Megan is given the task of determining the future of music with Merlin stating: “If you wish to change the future you must foretell it.”Megan must reveal the unicorn song to save her mother and as she starts to play her Lute and begins to imagine, she succeeds by evoking what we now refer to as orchestral music. Merlin wonders how a child could dream such beauty and says that when they hear that music again they will know that they have cured their mother’s illness. They must find a unicorn but the unicorn will only approach a child who is pure of heart and sitting in an open field singing.
Megan and Own then travel to the island of Avalon to find the unicorns and are assisted by King Arthur who warns them of his sister Morgan. While waiting for the boat to take them over to the island Megan plays her Lute again, this time singing songs about their travels and how she wishes to be back at home in the kingdom. Morgan, having tried but failed to catch a unicorn in the past and desperate for one of their magic horns, tricks Megan and Owen by saying that she is the only one that can make their mother better and that she will only do so if they bring a unicorn to her.
Megan succeeds in drawing the unicorn close to her but Morgan’s archers are waiting by and shoot arrows at the unicorn – these are magically diverted to part the sky and Megan and the unicorn are saved. Megan then says to the unicorn that the only thing she can give it is freedom and with that the unicorn touches its horn on her instrument and on her necklace, and the beautiful music that she imagined in Merlin’s cave starts to play again. Later they return to the castle to find their mother has been cured and she tells them of her dream about two children and a unicorn.
This story and music are both beautiful and this is an album my daughter and I will cherish forever, however we understand the message from this story on different levels. I particularly like the idea of the birth of music from silence and the evolution it takes over time and under differing conditions and influences. I also very much appreciate the notion that the future of music is in the hands of the children and that without the ability and desire to imagine the future all we have is the present and the past.
The magic unicorn can also take on a representative form for me as I imagine that its desire to allow music to move into the future takes place only once it has been freed. Morgan, with her deception and motivation to kill the unicorn, could some ways be symbolic of the current regulatory climate music faces today, paralleling the desire to keep the magic of music as private property for the purposes of personal gain. Like much of culture, these symbols and meanings are a matter of personal interpretation.
From an educational point of view this CD, like all of those we have listened to so far in this series, is fantastic. The layering of an interesting story with periodic music educates, illustrates and entices young people in a way that is in itself a form of magic. On one level my daughter hears a story about two children, but underneath it there is the history of music presented in an effortless and enjoyable way. Megan acts also as a role model in some respects, not just because of the purity of her heart, but to show children that making music is beautiful, a way of connecting with people, expressing emotions and changing the world.
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