Village Scenes
for junior high orchestra
1996
4.5 minutes
Orchestra: 2.2.2.1, 2.2.1.0, timp, 1 perc, strings
Commission: Greater Twin Cities' Youth Symphonies
Premiere: Junior Philharmonic North
Ed Schaefle, Conductor
Ordway Music Theatre, Minneapolis
Nov 17, 1996
Movements:
1. Park Games
2. Forest Path
3. Barn Dance
Notes: During the summer of 1996 my wife and I spent time traveling in Wales and southern England. We were charmed by the rural villages we stayed in.
One day we watched school children play games in a park, surprised by the vigor of their version of leapfrog. In Park Games different sections of the orchestra toss ideas back and forth, each section doing their part to keep the game going.
We stayed two nights at an isolated cottage, and decided late one afternoon to walk to the village. Our hosts suggested we shortcut through the forest by an ancient path. We walked by horses grazing in a pasture and crossed a fence using a well-worn wooden stile. Beyond the fence a Forest Path wandered up a long hill through a magical, sun-flecked tangle of trees and underbrush. (The historical significance of this path was soon revealed. It ended at the pub.)
My wife and I love to dance and enjoyed seeing posters advertising barn dances in English villages. Sadly, none of them matched our schedule. To write Barn Dance I relied on memories of dancing the previous summer in the tiny mountain community of Penland, North Carolina. There a local band had played Appalachian music of British ancestry, and several of us clog danced, a traditional English country dance. Clogging is lively, robust, and heavy-footed.