Hi there!
I hope you are well.
One week to go till half term. This first half term has flown by, at the same as not!
I wish I were able to craft well-written blog posts at the moment. Sadly, my mind is really fatigued and I am lacking the focus to do that. I think that's the effect of the new term- I hope !
This week has been a busy one.
Monday night, CBC and I went to see 'Peter Grimes', Benjamin Britten's opera about a beleaguered fisherman from Aldeburgh at ENO, English National Opera.
Benjamin Britten, if you haven't heard of him, is one of England's greatest composers. We had a reputation in the 'classical music' world as being a bit rubbish as composers. Or at least, none of the great names, like Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Haydn, Ravel, Verdi, et al, were English. Our finest composer was Henry Purcell, beloved composer of the Baroque era and then, very little was thought of English composers for another couple of hundred years or so.
Then, Benjamin Britten, born in 1913 and died in 1976, came along. He is also well known as being the partner of renowned Tenor, Peter Peers. Together, they set up the Britten-Peers school and foundation. He founded the Aldeburgh festival with peers and is responsible for the creation of the Snape Maltings concert hall. He wrote with great imagination and skill and some of his best works are his operas.
Peter Grimes is the opera which brought him to great international acclaim. It has a theme in it with notably recurs in quite a few of Britten's operas- the struggle of an outsider against a hostile society. In this opera, we begin with a scene where an inquest is being made as to whether the death of Peter Grimes' young apprentice fisherman was an accident or something more sinister. Grimes is an outsider and is constantly the subject of whisperings by those in the town, known as the Borough. The verdict is left open but Grimes is advised not to get another apprentice. Grimes is despairing as to whether he will ever be away from the gossip and mutterings but doesn't help himself by how he responds to the villagers and also how he is seen to treat his apprentices. Ellen Orford, the school teacher, who is fond of Grimes, vows to help him if he gets a new apprentice and makes it clear she would like to marry him but he vows he can only marry once he's proved everyone wrong and has made his fortune in fishing.
He is constantly ostracized by the Borough and they refuse to help him, except for 2 men, one of whom has found him a new apprentice from the Workhouse. The child arrives the night of a storm when a drunk and rowdy pub unites in their dislike of him. In next scene, it is Sunday morning and Ellen, the school teacher sees a bruise on the new apprentice's neck and his worried. Later, when a suspicious village go to Grimes' hut to find out whether he is up to no good, in Grime's haste to get away from the villagers, he and the apprentice go down the cliff to the boat. Despite, Grime's earlier warning for the boy to be careful, alas, things go wrong and the apprentice dies as he falls down the cliff. Grimes is in despair.
The village notice Grimes' absence after a couple of days and when he returns and Ellen has found the boy's washed up sweater which she made, she and Balstrode, the Captain and fear the worst and tell Grimes he must scuttle his boat as the only way to escape the judgement of the Borough. Grimes sails out to sea, his boat is seen sinking and life continues in the Borough.
It is an incredibly bleak opera but it is beautifully evocative in its music, particularly the 6 interludes which are between scene changes where the orchestra sets the scene musically what what is occurring.
Britten later put four of these into a concert piece called "Four Sea interludes"
The first is called Dawn, then there is The Storm, Sunday Morning and Moonlight.
They really do depict what their name suggests and I really recommend you listen to them.
It was a wonderful performance and we really enjoyed it, despite my being in floods of tears at the end. Poor Peter Grimes!
Tuesday, I was very tired for school but it was an ok today, all in all. I was pleased that past me had bought some fish and sausages and put them in the school freezer so I had something to go with dinner for the next 2 evenings.
Wednesday, I had agreed to lead a teacher's INSET on music. Well, for half the session. I've not actually ever done this at my school before, in 16 years. Mainly, because I teach the music and no one else does so it hasn't come up as a need. However, my colleague, M, a young teacher, a brilliant teacher, told me he'd love it if I led an INSET so I suggested to our Assistant Head that I lead one, just for fun and to give staff experience of some musical concepts etc which she thought was a great idea.
So, on Wednesday, at 4.30pm, I told all the teachers to come to my room where I taught them almost 2 hours worth of Year 4 music lessons in 30mins. I taught them about Pentatonic music, transposition, octaves and I got them to sing in 4 part harmony and learn to play a piece. The lovely thing was, they were all really enthusiastic and sang beautifully! Everyone was so nice about it and told me how much they'd enjoyed it and how it was their favourite INSET. It made me really happy to see they'd appreciated it and not found it a waste of their time!
Thursday was a really positive day. My year 3 students worked really hard and behaved themselves (mostly) in their 4th recorder lesson.
Then, I had Year 4 for three lessons It was their first lesson on Drones and Melodies and it is the day I teach them about travelling ministrels. We then spend the rest of the lesson travelling around the school singing Tudor song, Hey Ho, Nobody at home whilst accompanying ourselves with drones and asking for money with a prepared speech. The kids always absolutely love this lesson and this year group was no exception. In fact, their behaviour was excellent, including the usually VERY disruptive class! It was one child's birthday and he told me it was the best birthday ever which was sweet.
After school, I had choir, who were hyper but I had a brain wave. We have been using kazoos for one of our songs and they are a pain to clean each time to disinfect them so I had all these plastic skinny long bags from the new recorders I'd bought for the Year 3's. I hadn't recycled them yet so I gave them all one to put their kazoos in so they could use the same one each week- I had some old sticky labels I'd saved from WOMOTM's desk which I'd recently brought home from Northumberland so I felt quite pleased to find a solution!
Friday, after my Year 6 lessons and orchestra, I grabbed the orchestra kids at 3.00pm to take their photo for the clubs wall. I told the children I wanted to take the photo in the school hall so that A could have her proper timpani in the photo. We aren't using the hall at the moment so I told the children we were going to have to sneak up there secretly to take the photo so they couldn't make a SOUND whilst we went there or on the way there or I'd get into trouble. Not sure if this is true or not, but they ADORED the whole stealth operation and we managed to get there and back in total silence and we had such a laugh about it when we got back!
Thai on Friday night.
Saturday was our orchestra concert in London. We had a rehearsal and wen to Miznom, a Lebanese street food restaurant on Elgin Road which was lovely. It was quite sad as it was our principal Clarinet player, Drew's last concert before he moves to Lincolnshire. The concert went really well but we got home super late.
This morning, I woke up at 9am and managed to get to church for 9.20am but was very tired!!
We ended up travelling to another town to see if we could find CBC's missing bank card (to no avail) and ended up having some lunch in John Lewis.
This week, hopefully, won't be super busy....I hope!
