The Life of the Child

Notes from the Composer

The inspiration of The Life of the Child comes from two sources: the desire to express the beauty of human development in music and the desire to introduce another generation of musicians to the beauty of the orchestra through their direct participation.  It is a musical creation that tells the story of growing up.  The musicians are the story tellers in this drama and these story tellers participate by “telling” or playing their own part.

This is a ten minute work for orchestra, beginning violinists and beginning recorder players.  It was written to be performed by the Juneau Student Symphony with the young violinists of JAMM (Juneau Alaska Music Matters), elementary school recorder players from all over Juneau, and high school musicians.  Violinists from Lisa Miles’ Suzuki studio have been inspired to join the performances as well as violinists from the Montessori Borealis elementary orchestra.

The structure of the piece arises from the way we humans develop and grow up.  It opens with a heart-beat introduction which gradually slows and strengthens to the first theme.  This is the infancy theme.  The story for the child at this stage is one of absorbing the world around.  In the simplest terms, it is walking directly behind or in the footsteps of his/her parents and teachers.  In musical terms, it is a simple melody that is dictated to the kindergarten violinists by the orchestra in call and response. 

The second theme is the elementary-age child who walks beside his/her teacher and family.  The elementary recorder players cary this theme while the orchestra supports them and surrounds them with variation.

Adolescence is a time of reinvention of self in a social context when the child practices stepping out in front of her/his teacher.  At this stage, the music introduces a twelve-bar blues theme that ties the first two themes together.  So much of pop art culture focuses on this stage of human development and, for better or worse, this composer has not been able to resist the dramatic potential of the age.  Significant within the social context is that this section includes repeated improvised choruses in which any musician of the performance can participate.

Maturity is marked by graceful synthesis of all of the parts of growing up.  In the music, full quotes of previous melodies are graced with snippets derived from the same.  They culminate in a pure brass tonic chord from the original key of the piece.  The circle is completed with the heart beat that opened the musical drama only now slower and quieter, fading to a final gentle triangle hit like a single drop of water.