Past blog hops and challenges

Showing posts with label glass. Show all posts
Showing posts with label glass. Show all posts

Friday, March 1, 2013

Challenge of Music reveal

Erin Prais-Hintz of Treasures-Found.blogspot.com issued a challenge to make something, be it jewelry or some other craft, that was inspired by a piece of instrumental music.  I thought of a song right away but it had a single word at the very end of the music.  I asked Erin about it and she said to go for.  Then I had to try and find the music.  It wasn't readily available at home.  So what to do?

One of the types of music Erin wanted us to listen to was music that paints a series of pictures.  My friend and beading partner Evelyn found some music that she wanted to use as her challenge piece so I listened along with her and decided to use her piece of music for the challenge also.  If you look at her piece and then at my piece you would not believe that we listened to the same piece.

Ralph Vaughan Williams was an English composer of many types of music, symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music and film scores.  The music that I listened to was "A Pastoral Symphony (Symphony No. 3)" which draws on his experience as an ambulance driver in World War I.  He would go up a hill to view the sunset.  There is a cadenza for trumpet in the second movement that is based on a bugler's practice where the bugler repeatedly played an interval of a flattened seventh instead of an octave.  It was first played January 26, 1922 in London conducted by Adrian Boult.

Here is a link to YouTube: A Pastoral Symphony

It has four movements, each different.  The first is Molto moderato which is contentedly calm in tone but has a darker central section.  It often features solo instruments.  This is the section that I listened to to make my piece.  The second movement is Lento moderato a slow movement opening with a horn solo followed by a cello solo leading to the trumpet cadenza.  The third movement is Moderato pesante which is introduced by a brass section followed by some fast music (the only time fast music appears in the symphony).  The fourth and final movement is Lento starting with a wordless soprano voice sung over a soft drumroll.  The orchestra then begins a elegiac rhapsody followed by an impassioned outpouring of feeling followed by violins playing the opening soprano melody with the soprano singing the music into silence.

 Here is what I created:


A Pastoral Symphony Necklace and Earrings
The set is made from peach and yellow opaque beads with pink, Lt. green, and amethyst faceted beads.  Also included at aqua glass disks and Lt green glass leaves. 

My information was obtained from Wikipedia and the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society websites.

Thanks for stopping by and be sure to visit all the other bloggers that participated in the Challenge of Music.