In Year 3 we are exploring the mournful music of the romantic composer, Antonin Dvorak. Over one-hundred years ago, Dvorak travelled from the Czech Republic, across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States of America. While he was impressed by the beautiful scenery that he found, he was terribly homesick for Eastern Europe. This is when he wrote ‘Largo’ from his Symphony Number 9 “New World”, with its mournful solo from the cor anglais (a large oboe), expresses his longing for home. ‘Largo’ means a very slow tempo of music.
We listened to the music, and discussed the emotions which it brought up for us. We then imagined we were away from home and wrote letters home expressing how we feel and what we miss. This research will help to inspire our own compositions based on ‘Largo’ over the following weeks.
