Ode to Music

Ode to Music

‘Listen to the Birds’ and ‘Verdi for Kids’

From "Listen to the Birds"

By SUZANNE MacNEILLE

Not every parent wants to be a Tiger Mom, but many parents harbor the desire to raise a virtuoso cellist, or at the very least, children who can distinguish between their Vivaldi and their Verdi. Two new illustrated books, one complete with CD, aim to instruct children on how to listen to and appreciate classical music. Even if they don’t have a piano to practice on.

LISTEN TO THE BIRDS

An Introduction to Classical Music

By Ana Gerhard

Illustrated by Cecilia Varela

64 pp. The Secret Mountain. $16.95. (Picture book, with CD; ages 7 to 12)

VERDI FOR KIDS

His Life and Music

By Helen Bauer

Illustrated. 121 pp. Chicago Review Press. Paper, $16.95. (Middle grade/young adult; ages 9 to 16)

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From "Verdi for Kids"

“Listen to the Birds: An Introduction to Classical Music,” by Ana Gerhard, is a curious little book. Formatted as a small-scale picture book, it focuses on classical pieces that feature birds in one way or another. “Some scientists and historians believe that humans’ desire to imitate birdsong may be at the root of music,” Gerhard muses in the introduction. “It is indisputable that several composers drew their inspiration from birds, either by subtly evoking their voice or movements, mimicking their melodies with various instruments, or incorporating birdsongs recorded in nature into their works.”

The book, originally published in Spanish in Gerhard’s native Mexico (where she received instruction as a classical pianist), is organized according to individual works, each featuring a mini essay with an illustration by Cecilia Varela, who was trained in Buenos Aires. The 20 varied pieces begin with “The Goldfinch” and Vivaldi, and run through “Birdsong” and Clément Janequin; “The Bird” and Prokofiev; and “The Cuckoo and the Nightingale” and Handel.

Intriguing facts on both birds and music abound, certain to delight young trivia collectors. Yes, larks inspired Tchaikovsky and Ralph Vaughan Williams, but the birds are also virtuoso composers in their own right, assembling trills and tremolos into complex melodic sequences that “can last up to an hour,” Gerhard writes. Starlings, on the other hand, are natural mimics, a trait that Mozart prized in his own pet bird, which was apparently able to reproduce a melody in the third movement of his Piano Concerto No. 17. So despondent was Mozart when his starling died, Gerhard informs us, that he wrote a poetic tribute to the bird: “A little fool lies here / Whom I held dear — / A starling in the prime / Of his brief time. …”

Rounding out the volume is a listening guide for the enclosed CD, biographical sketches of the composers and an easy-to-understand glossary of musical terms. All in all, the book, though slight in size, is expansive in its reach. The result is a surprisingly thorough beginner’s introduction to classical music.

Opera, of course, occupies its own special corner of the classical music world, a corner that is at once defended by its fierce devotees and eyed with suspicion by those who, no matter what their age, are allergic to a musical form that seems to reek of elitism. In the introduction to her new biography of the 19th-century Italian opera maestro Giuseppe Verdi, Helen Bauer points out that opera was not viewed as a formidable, highbrow art at every stage of its development. “Opera began as an experiment and as entertainment for the wealthy and noble elements of the society,” she writes in her introduction. But “from this beginning opera fired up the imagination of the public.”

In 2013, the 200th anniversary of Verdi’s birth, there is no more timely way to reveal the fiery, populist side of opera to young readers than by exploring the turbulent life and times of the composer. And that is what Bauer — a classically trained musician and author of “Beethoven for Kids” — does, to great effect, through chronologically arranged chapters richly illustrated with historical photographs and drawings; activities designed to immerse children in various aspects of the era in which Verdi lived; and sidebars on historical events, musical traditions and terms. The writing is in-depth and lucid; most young readers will easily glide through the various phases of Verdi’s multifaceted life, beginning with his humble childhood in a village near Milan — where the composer, “a shy and quiet child,” and his mother once hid from French soldiers in the bell tower of a church — and moving on to his early years in the city itself, where, under the care of a generous patron, he received musical instruction after being rejected by a conservatory. A bleak period when his wife and children died by disease yields to years of grand success, with lavish productions of “La Traviata,” “Aida” and other works that are now classic.

A constant theme in Verdi’s life was political agitation as Italians struggled against France, and then Austria, in their quest for independence and unification. Verdi’s patriotism was ardent: “There is and should be only one kind of music pleasing to the ears of the Italians in 1848 — the music of the guns!” he wrote to his librettist during an uprising against the Austrians. Many of his operas, including “La Battaglia di Legnano” and “Attila,” were viewed as disguised political statements, and battles with religious and military censors were frequent and sometimes furious.

“Verdi for Kids” is primarily aimed at middle-school readers, though they may roll their eyes at some of its 21 “Activities,” which include things like “Play Hoop Rolling” and “Make Your Own Pasta.” The book’s strengths lie in the author’s emphasis on the historic and cultural context that binds the man, the music and the milieu. “Opera is full of drama and emotion, intrigue and action,” the soprano Deborah Voigt writes in her foreword. By the time they reach the end, most young readers are likely to agree with that assessment.