It’s PUBLISHED! After a very long wait, here is “Once Upon A Tune”!
It started with a trip to the cinema, when I was 4. The film was Fantasia, and I was terrified! The Sorcerer’s Apprentice! Night on Bare Mountain, with the demons and dead souls! I was rooted to my seat. Yet I longed to hear the music again, to once more thrill at the awe and splendour of the sound.
At school, a music teacher quietly explained how music tells stories – I remember him asking the class to listen out for the cockerel, at dawn, in Saint-Saën’s Danse Macabre. Meanwhile, my parents had a few old LPs at home. They told stories, too… Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty; Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf (oh, how I wept for the duck); Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.
Ah! Scheherazade, with an illustration by Edmund Dulac on the cover – a flying carpet of musical tales. Many times I listened, imagined, and drew. The music led me (via Dulac) to the Thousand and One Nights, and to Islamic art and design (an early student thesis of mine). So many doors were unlocked, so many interests ignited by that amazing music!
This wasn’t a posh home or a private school. I went to 70s comprehensives in Lowestoft. There were no concerts hall near me. My parents were not musical. I played recorder at school, and abandoned piano lessons at Grade 1.
So why did music capture my imagination? Because it told me stories. The music conjured illustrations and stories in my head, it swept me away and the repeated listening brought ever deeper knowledge and love of these masterpieces.
We all know how important music is to movies – imagine Jaws without that iconic, sinister, rhythmic score – yet so many people dismiss “Classical music” (so called), as boring, slow, old-fashioned, high-brow, not their cup of tea… I hardly know where to begin to unpick all this, except to say: oh, what they miss. This music isn’t just delicate lullabies and Mozartian minuets. It is music of power, danger, fear. Of beauty, heartbreak and love. It is music of wit, charm and unexpected humour. It is music that speaks to all of us. – if we allow it. A universal language.
This is why I began to present concerts for family audiences – with me painting illustrations, live on stage, to illuminate and celebrate the music I loved so much, to make it truly accessible, fun, inviting. To show that “classical” music isn’t just a nice tune, but something far more exciting and interesting.
Through these concerts I’ve learned so many wonderful stories, legends and myths; and for many years I have wanted to create a book of them. Finally, that dream has been realised, with ONCE UPON A TUNE, published by Otter-Barry Books this September. To help support the book, I’ve created six short films about each story in the collection, and you can see them here:
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
The Swan of Tuonela
The Flight of the Bumblebee
In the Hall of the Mountain King
Scheherazade
William Tell
It was a very hard to choose the stories – there are plenty more I could have used! Some of these musical works are very short (or extracts from larger works), easy to listen to and enjoy. But I wanted to feature Scheherazade in full – because SHE is the most important character of that particular piece of music, a powerful, wise, wonderful Middle-Eastern woman. The world of classical music can seem dominated by men; so having Scheherazade in her entirety was an important decision. It’s a one piece of music, 45 minutes, but in four sections, so easy to sample. I’ve really tried to consider all angles to make the book as inclusive and accessible as possible.
So who is this book for? It’s an expensive, luxury gift book, an investment. But in fact, there are SIX picture-book length tales, lavishly illustrated, so if you think of it like that, it’s really a bargain!
Obviously families who love music and want to encourage their children to enjoy music will understand the purpose of this book. But it’s not highbrow or difficult. You don’t even HAVE to listen to the music that inspired me – the stories stand strongly on their own, as powerful as any collection of myths and legends.
But I especially hope the book finds its way into schools – for within these pages are so many amazing cross-curricular possibilities. The arts, and music in particular, have been much diminished in education in recent years. Budget cuts, curriculum restraints and the lack of support for art subjects at higher education, means music is often seen as a luxury “add-on”. When music education does feature, it’s usually focussed mainly on learning to play an instrument. What is so often missing is the simple act of learning to listen.
There will be no successful future for musicians, without audiences. But people are very often “scared” of the “classics” – we are back to the labels above – “Its not for me. It’s too highbrow”. I hear this from teachers, from parents, increasingly. So this book is the solution. I really believe that! Follow these stories, explore the illustrations, and you’ll have all you need to really listen and crucially ENJOY music. There will be comprehensive teaching notes available on the Otter-Barry Books website to help with finding ways to use this book in the classroom.
Like the effect of the Katie series and art gallery visits, I really hope this book will inspire children to listen, and perhaps *want* to go to a real live concert – and what a treat they’d have in store!
If you want to just listen to recordings, you can download or stream. To help I have created a FREE Spotify of my recommended recordings:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6ZDrBMWZBYKbOK8Qdufn32?si=7ca27b5cfed94925&nd=1
Remember, music education isn’t just about PLAYING an instrument. It is also about learning to LISTEN to music and enjoy it. You don’t have to be a painter to visit a gallery. You don’t need to be a musician to go to a concert.
Open your minds, your hearts, your ears…
LISTEN, and let this music take your hand – as it whispers…
ONCE, UPON A TUNE…
