In year 3 we are beginning our discovery journey of composer, Antonin Dvorak’s ‘Largo,’ from ‘Symphony for a New World.’
Dvorak was a Czech composer in the late 1800s. The music he wrote was part of the Romantic period of classical music. It is often slow, sad and mournful. When he went to worker in New York in 1892, he found himself horribly homesick. This is when he composed ‘Largo,’ in which the long, mournful melody played on the cor anglais (or large oboe) evokes the Czech folk melodies he was brought up hearing.
We listened to ‘Largo’ and discussed the emotions it made us feel. How does it make you feel?:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05dslcv
We then wrote letters while listening to the music, imagining we were far from home. How would we feel? What would we want to express? Here is an example of one of our letters.
