h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Went to see little 's school play this evening, Rats! (The Pied Piper of Hamelin, by another name). I think it's the first time they've done a play - it's always been a carol concert before.

Little is in Year 3, who played the children, who were taken away and never came back.

The play was so good, I would happily have seen it without any personal involvement. The kids were brilliant. The pied piper was not fazed even when her radio mike fell off - she just carried on - a real trouper. The Mayor (Alderman Greedy) had a lovely singing voice and he was very confident with his lines.

There were a few glitches, apart from the radio mike falling off. The piper missed he queue and had to be fetched after having taken the rats to the river Weser and the little girl who was left after the children were taken away burst into tears - . Bless her, she stayed and tried to sing through her tears.

They're making a video of it for us to buy in the New Year. Technology!

Wow! So you can embarrass your child for years to come...

Oh mine played a *very* minor role. The children were the youngest, did the least and were on-stage for the shortest period. I think he spent most of his time looking to see where I was!

Now the child who burst into tears on the other hand - I felt really sorry for her. Wouldn't come on-stage to take her final bow. Yes, for the older children, there was some really good future embarrassment potential!

I remember seeing a children's play on this subject at our school some years ago - I wonder if it was the same one.

Last night our school put on a Nativity Play. None of my children were involved - it was just the 5th graders (11-year-olds). I sang in the choir and we had been asked to support it.

It was a version by Orff and was very funny among other things because they had translated it into the local dialect, which, being a country area, fitted very well with the conversation of the shepherds, as they did all the talking. The angels spoke and sang High German of course. Or Latin, as is usual with Orff.

It was really great fun to do and good also even if your own little darling wasn't an angel or a shepherd.

The Three Kings, after paying their "reverences" made a quick getaway and the shepherds had a good go at how the rich never thought much. Just dumped a load of gold and went off leaving the family in the stable.

"If I had had the money, I would have put Jesus on a lovely throne and would have built a palace of gold for Mary. And I would have given Joseph a workshop with golden hammers and pliers and nails of ivory".

A good time was certainly had by all. The adult choir sang some Mozart and a couple of Gospel songs with the senior choir and the senior choir sung a Christmas lullaby by Rutter.

The only one of my children who was involved was my middle one, who, as an ex-pupil was entitled to sing with the adult choir and also got a lot out of singing the Mozart and enjoyed the kids' play too.

I shall have to look forward to my grandchildren's nativity plays and recorder recitals now - not much more coming from my own kids.

Don't you find that after an evening like that, Christmas is really here?

Sounds to have been a wonderful evening for you TC. Yes, it brings home the fact that Christmas is getting very close. I only know Orff's 'Carmina Burana' - nothing else of his works.

I've no idea whether this production of 'Rats' was the same one. The main rats wore black leather bikers' type gear and were wonderfully gangsterish.

'The Three Kings, after paying their "reverences" made a quick getaway and the shepherds had a good go at how the rich never thought much. Just dumped a load of gold and went off leaving the family in the stable."

I've just remembered - in 'Rats', the aldermen threatened to vote Labour if the Mayor didn't get rid of the rats!

Hi ZSF,

Happy to hear of 's success. Was it a debut peformance?

I envy you all the fun you have in store, should little decide to become a thespian. My is ever so much more than three; but it has been a pure delight working with his stage stuff over the years and collecting as much video as I could.

He started late, in comparison. He was 5 when his first school pageant allowed him to play 'Santa' for his grade's performance (gets his volume from me, he does; but his singing voice comes from his mother).

He enjoyed a couple of school plays and musicals, and eventually went community theatre in grade 7 or 8. I'd have to do some serious searching to even count the roles he has had the opportunity to play. (He's played both Scrooge and Marley's ghost, Sheriff of Nottingham, Daddy Warbucks, and Hamlet, to name a few; all superbly done, of course.)

Should you be so fortunate that little chooses the stage, among other opportunities for extracurricular activities, take my advice and be very involved. The kids are great to work with, and the work is all play. Sets, costumes, props, they're all good.

(You could, if so inclined, get a glimpse by reading my edited entry on 'Some Tips for Making Stage Props'.)

Enjoy these times; they're not to be regarded lightly.

Wow, TC, your post was a complete revelation to me. I am almost completely ignorant of everything you spake.

Latin? Is this a catholic school?

Low German, High German? Wow. I did not know there was still a distinction...

"Recorder recitals"... spare me... My child plays the trombone, the orchestral slide whistle...

Shnooks surprised us a few years ago in a Grade School performance at the local Cultural Arts Center (right next to the place where they hold the monster truck rallies and rodeos) when she, out of all the little miscreants, stepped up to the mike and in a clear confident voice recited her lines in an intelligible manner.

Yesterday, at a surprise talent contest (if you failed or refused you get to run a mile today) in her athletic's class, Shnooks just picked up the book she was reading and did an impromptu dramatic reading.
She gleefully indicated that it went over most of their heads...

Her mother is an actress of some note, and a singer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/classical/musicnow/top50_results.shtml

"In at 38 Our highest ranking one-hit wonder. Carl Orff wrote a lot of music, but it’s all forgotten now apart from this one piece, which has been used in countless films and adverts, one of which has resulted in me smelling the way I do today. It’s Carmina Burana."

Ozzy used it in concert as an overture to "Crazy Train" when he was touring with Randy Rhoads.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/music/musicalelements/devicesrev3.shtm

Okay, now somebody please tell me what the hell they are singing?

Nevermind....

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~caveman/Carmina/

"O Fortuna
The best known part of Carmina Burana is the opening section, titled "O Fortuna".

O Fortuna
velut luna
statu variabilis,
semper crescis
aut decrescis;
vita detestabilis
nunc obdurat
et tunc curat
ludo mentis aciem,
egestatem,
potestatem
dissolvit ut glaciem.

O Fortune,
like the moon
you are changeable,
ever waxing
and waning;
hateful life
first oppresses
and then soothes
as fancy takes it;
poverty
and power
it melts them like ice. "

http://www.catan.demon.co.uk/orff/orffinfo.htm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/music/muze/index.pl?site=music&action=list_album&album_id=691007

Album: Classic Sleaze ?!


http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/music/muze/index.pl?site=music&action=biography&artist_id=22567

Comoedia de Christi resurrectione (1957)

What the heck is this?

and last but not least, H2G2 burps up this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A709670

'Carmina Burana' - Drink, Sex and Mediaeval Monks

Oh, my!

Thanks again, TC, you made my day!

"Drink, Sex and Mediaeval Monks"

I'm very proud of that title.

I doff my filthy derby hat to you, also!

Hi, Fords, TC, tonsil and Gnomon!

It was his first time in a school play - oh no - actually it wasn't! He was in one when he was three (I think) at pre-school when he refused to play one of the three kings (I want to be *myself*) and settled in the end for being a Christmas tree.

The following year he was a reindeer.

The year before last, he said a couple of lines on his own (he would have been six then) in the school Carol Concert. He was very confident and clear. So yes, he might have it in him to be a thesp. A week or so ago, he took the mike at a Mayor's reception for School Crossing Patrols and sang Jingle Bells to everyone. The introduction was rather better than the performance as he forgot his words part way through.

I love Carmina Burana and have sung in it quite a few times. Gnomon's entry was a nice one. It has a wonderful earthiness about it.

Sounds as though Snooks has talents in these directions too! You must have been proud of her, TR.

What? That me and Uvula's well-founded arrogance has been passed on?

But of course! I'm told that little is a very good mirror for me.

Tonsil revenge - you are definitely not ignorant. We all enjoy your intelligent and erudite postings.

Well, I suppose you could - at a pinch - be defined as such if you take it literally: there is something you don't know. Which I do not regard as an insult. So I'll tell you - what little I know.

Everyone in any choir in Europe will have sung the Carmina Burana - or at least heard of it and most probably heard it at some time.

Orff is most famous for introducing practical music practic to children and evolved simple instruments so that even novices could get the feel of making music within the group. At least, that's the way I understand his thinking, without looking anything up. Gnomon will know all about it.

He also adapted medieval verse - the Carmina Burana was a mixture of the German used by peasants in the middle ages and the Latin also used at the time. The arrangements, however, are 20th century, but fairly easy to cope with - at least for the choir - no idea how the orchestra sees it. The nativity play that the school did was similar, in that it had, for example, modern type music played on recorders to represent the shepherds' flutes. The violins had one or two bars that almost sounded like hillbilly music, in 6/8 - fast waltz time. The songs were adaptations of well-known Christmas Carols with a mediaeval sound to them which were easy for the children to sing.

The spoken words between the bits of music and the singing were reproduced by our kids in the local dialect, as opposed to the dialect-free German (i.e. High German) spoken by their heavenly visitors.

The Carmina Burana - when well done - re-creates explicitly, implicitly and musically one damn great orgasm, in my opinion, and I have always been too embarrassed to sing it in public and have never been able to bring myself to join a choir that is performing it.

Of course, everyone will now argue that any symphony or oratorio also builds up to a climax, because that's what classical music is about (excuse me, I mean classical in the sense of "not pop music" here). I have no answer to that argument. You don't get louder or softer in a pop song, or faster or slower - each song is at the same level and the same speed and comes in a rather unsubtle form of A B A B - verse, chorus, verse, chorus. Classical works are more complicated and - to the annoyance of the early digital sound technicians - can be loud, soft, fast, slow, lyrical and bouncy all in one movement - certainly within one symphony. But in the Carmina Burana, the words give its form a purely sexual aspect and not just an artistic one.

If you understand the words it is impossible to sing without blushing. The Mittelhochdeutsch (middle high German) which, I think the German parts are in, are fairly easy to interpret for a German, and the Latin is usually translated in the score on in the programme for you.

As for Latin at school, our school is a perfectly ordinary school, and like most "Gymnasium" which is the German equivalent of a Grammar School, offers an alternative of French or Latin as a second foreign language after English. The other form gives French as a first foreign language and then a choice of English or Latin. About half the 7th graders choose Latin as their second language. A second language is obligatory - taking the other "second" language as a third language in the 9th grade is optional.

When I say "our" school, I mean that my husband teaches there, my eldest two recently left and my third one is still there.

I won't give a translation of "O fortuna" here - you will probably find one on the web somewhere - this post has gone on for long enough.

Not into backlogs, eh?
See posting 10.

Thanks, TC, I was not being facetious. When I say I am ignorant of something, I usually intend to remedy that state of affairs post haste.

The concept of 2nd and 3rd foreign languages blows my mind.
Most people around here only have englisch or spanisch and in many cases, never the twain shall meet. In fact, because of my Englisch vocabulary I have been accused of being uppity.

Latin has suffered a serious lapse in our school systems, apparently because of it's perceived connection to the RC church. My daughter studies it for fun, just as she does Japanese. Unfortunately, her Englisch is beginning to take on the local trappings and I think it is affecting her writing and comprehension.

I keep wanting to type Carmen Banana...

I always like the bit in Carmina Burana about 'the Queen of England lying in my arms' - I think it's a reference to Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was a bit of a stunner. Married two kings - divorced the king of France and married the king of England (Henry II?). I've never been ashamed to sing it. I think the men have the rudest bits, though!

TC - I think you misread 'arrogant' for 'ignorant'. No-one would ever call tonsil ignorant.

I really would have liked to have heard that performance, though. Did they make a video or a recording of it? Rats! is having a video produced in the new year (how flash can you get!).