The 2023-2024 M.C. is
​Franz Peter Schubert!

This year's Mystery Group Lessons  were spent watching various videos and discussing the life and music of John Williams.  Students received packets with information about Williams as well as homework assignments (besides practicing).  Homework is due the week of April 1st at your student's private lesson.

Below are various links to YouTube videos that should be listened too and/or watched.  If there is a box that says "video unavailable, watch on YouTube", still  click on it.  It will work.  I'm just not the best at getting links to do what I want them to do.

 Parents:  Spread out the listening assignments over the next couple of weeks, especially for the elementary students.  This is a lot of music to enjoy so take the time to do so.  Family dinners, in the car, a daily 10 minute special "listen" time would be good choices for the entire family to enjoy the music of Williams.  Of course, with this particular M.C., families may already have recordings of his music they have enjoyed through the years.  

Homework Assignments:
Your packet includes your assignment; however, just in case said assignment gets "lost", links to a pdf of said assignments are below.

Early Elementary Group

Elementary Group

Middle School Group

​High School Group

Listening Links

Podcasts by WGUC 90.9, Cincinnati  OH -- an educational outreach for teachers and students.
​About Franz Peter Schubert:  https://www.classicsforkids.com/composer/?id=65
Listen to Schubert Podcasts, #2, #3, and #4 as a family.

​Franz Schubert wrote many waltzes for piano solo. Schubert's pieces of dance music are among his most delightful musical treats. Most of them are short, simple, and immediately engaging. He composed them throughout his life for private parties and home performance. 

The instrument used for this recording is a pianoforte, the instrument Schubert wrote for (and the father of our piano today).  

Schubert's Impromptus are a series of eight pieces for solo piano composed in 1827. They were published in two sets of four impromptus each: the first two pieces in the first set were published in the composer's lifetime as Op. 90; the second set was published posthumously as Op. 142 in 1839. The third and fourth pieces in the first set were published in 1857 (although the third piece was printed by the publisher in G major, instead of G♭ as Schubert had written it, and remained available only in this key for many years). The two sets are now catalogued as D. 899 and D. 935 respectively. They are considered to be among the most important examples of this popular early 19th-century genre.

The Fantasie in C major, Op.15 (D. 760), popularly known as the Wanderer Fantasy, is a four-movement fantasy for solo piano composed by Franz Schubert in 1822. It is widely considered Schubert's most technically demanding composition for this instrument. In a ironic way, Schubert himself said "the devil may play it" in reference to his own inability to do so properly.
0:01 first movement
6:11 second movement
13:41 third movement
​ 18:10 fourth movement

Schubert​​'s Symphony #8 in b minor, D. 759, nicknamed the "Unfinished Symphony", is a musical composition Schubert started in 1822 but left with only two complete movements--though he lived for another six years.  A scherzo, nearly completed in piano score but with only two pages orchestrated, also survives.  This symphony is considered by many musicians to be the first Romantic symphony because of its dramatic development and lyrical melodies.  It's unusual in that both movements are written in triple meter.  

Luciano Pavarotti performing Schubert's Ave Maria live in concert.   This most famous of Schubert's Lieder, titled "Ellen's Third Song" was composed in 1825 as part of his Op. 52, a setting of seven songs from Walter Scott's 1810 popular narrative poem The Lady of the Lake.  This Lied has transcended the poem, becoming part of the fabric of the church's musical heritage.  

Schubert's Lieder (over 600 songs) pointed the way to the Romantic Period.  Writing for voice and piano as equal partners, Schubert transformed a "simple" song into a new art form.  First we listen to Die Florelle (The Trout) performed in Schubert's original Lied composed in early 1817.  Next to it we click on the fourth movement of  Schubert's String Quartet composed in 1819 but not published until 1829, a year of Schubert's death. 

The second Lied assigned is the above versions of Schubert's Der Erlkonig​ (The Erl King).  The original Lied makes heavy demands on the soloist who has to become four different characters -- Narrator, Father, Son and the Erlkonig--as well as the accompanist.  The technical demands at the piano are immense as the accompaniment shifts in places to denote the horse racing through the forest, the son crying to his father as he hears the Erlkonig beckon to him and finally the father's heartbreak.  The second version of Der Erlkonig is Franz Liszt's transcription of the lied for piano solo.  Liszt, the most famous piano virtuoso of the time, loved Schubert's Lieder and made transcriptions of several Schubert Lieder.   Enjoy!