Music from the ballet for primary school assemblies

[Blossom]

Hopefully a fun post for a dreary January morning….

Delighted to hear that my daughter’s class teacher has started an initiative at school with her class. Each week, they will select a piece of classical music to play in assembly and a child will give a short piece of information about it.

I hope my daughter will take part – she’s not keen on getting up in assembly but she is open to choosing a piece of music based on the ballets she has seen -

Swan Lake, La Fille Mal Gardee, Coppelia (this one at the cinema!) and Giselle which isn’t bad going for a not quite 10 year old!

I thought for Fille, the Clog Dance could be a good piece to play with video rather than audio alone as it’s quite fun and there are obvious highlights from some of the other pieces.

 

I’ve also told the teacher I’d be happy to make some recommendations to keep them ticking along across the year. So, what would you choose and why? 

[bridiem]

That sounds like a really good initiative, Blossom. I don't know what primary school assemblies are like nowadays, but I personally think that the information about any music chosen should generally be kept to a minimum so that the children can respond to it and think about it in their own way/s. And I think that the regular use of reflective music would be good, as a counter to the no doubt endless 'stimulation' that will follow during the day, although more upbeat music could be used too. And music that you might not expect to be appropriate; at my (Catholic) primary school in London in the late 1960s, music (chosen by the headmistress, a nun who was very cultured and musical) was played every day as we filed into the assembly hall, and a regular choice was the Sea Interludes from Britten's Peter Grimes. I had no idea what is was or what the context was, but it was hauntingly beautiful and it stayed with me into adulthood and for the rest of my life. So in general I would choose for the music rather than the context.