James Curnow and Voluntary on Old Hundredth

James Curnow (born April 17, 1943) is a music composer for concert bands, brass bands, and vocal and instrumental solos and ensembles, who has also written arrangements of music pieces such as Trumpet Voluntary while teaching at both public schools and on college and university levels. Curnow was born on April 17, 1943, in Port Huron, Michigan, and raised in Royal Oak, Michigan, where he received his initial musical training in the public schools and The Salvation Army Instrumental Programs in these cities. Educated at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan (B.M.) and Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan (M.M.), where he was a euphonium student of Leonard Falcone, and a conducting student of Dr. Harry Begian, he had studies in composition and arranging with F. Maxwell Wood, James Gibb, Jere Hutchinson, and Irwin Fischer.

Curnow has taught in all areas of instrumental music, both in the public schools (five years), and on the college and university level (thirty years). He is a member of several professional organizations, including the American Bandmasters Association, College Band Directors National Association, National Band Association and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). He has received annual ASCAP standard awards since 1979.  In 1980 he received the National Band Association’s Citation of Excellence. In 1985, while a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, Mr. Curnow was honored as an outstanding faculty member. Among his most recent honors are inclusion in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the South and Southwest, and Composer of the Year (1997) by the Kentucky Music Teachers Association and the National Music Teachers Association.

As a conductor, composer and clinician, Curnow has traveled throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and Europe where his music has received wide acclaim. He has won several awards for band compositions including Second Place in the 2001 International Trumpet Guild Composition Competition (Three Episodes for Trumpet and Piano).  Curnow has been commissioned to write over two hundred works for concert band, brass band, orchestra, choir and various vocal and instrumental ensembles. His published works now number well over four hundred.   His most recent commissions include the 2005 Falcone Festival Twentieth Anniversary honoring Mrs. (Beryl) Falcone (Fantasia di Falcone for Euphonium). His prolific output for young musicians reflects his many years teaching at the public school and college levels. Jim continues to be active as a conductor, clinician, and music educator.  Curnow currently lives in Nicholasville, Kentucky, where he is president, composer, and educational consultant for Curnow Music Press, Inc., publishers of significant music for concert band and brass band.   Also, he serves as Composer-in-residence (emeritus) on the faculty of Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky, and is editor of all music publications for The Salvation Army in Atlanta, Georgia.

The following works by James Curnow are contained in my collection.

Christmas Flourish.

Overture to a Winter Festival.

Voluntary on Old Hundredth after Henry Purcell.

Henry Mancini and The White Dawn Suite

Enrico Nicola “Henry” Mancini (April 16, 1924 – June 14, 1994) was an American composer, conductor, and arranger, most remembered for his film and television scores, whose best known works include the jazz-idiom theme to The Pink Panther film series (“The Pink Panther Theme”), his “Moon River” to Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the theme to the Peter Gunn television series. Mancini was born on April 16, 1924, in the Little Italy neighborhood of Cleveland, and was raised near Pittsburgh, in the steel town of West Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. His parents had immigrated from the Abruzzo region of Italy. Mancini’s father, Quinto (born March 13, 1893, Scanno, Italy) was a steelworker, who made his only child begin piccolo lessons at the age of eight.  When Mancini was twelve years old, he began piano lessons. Quinto and Henry played flute together in the Aliquippa Italian immigrant band, “Sons of Italy.”  After graduating from Aliquippa High School in 1942, Mancini attended the renowned Juilliard School of Music in New York. In 1943, after roughly one year at Juilliard, his studies were interrupted when he was drafted into the United States Army. He initially served in the infantry, later transferring to an Army band. In 1945, he participated in the liberation of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria.

Newly discharged, Mancini entered the music industry. In 1946, he became a pianist and arranger for the newly re-formed Glenn Miller Orchestra, led by ‘Everyman’ Tex Beneke. Mancini met his wife of 43 years, singer Virginia “Ginny” O’Connor, while both were members of the Tex Beneke orchestra, just after World War II.  They had three children. Following the war, Mancini broadened his skills in composition, counterpoint, harmony and orchestration during studies opening with the composers Ernst Krenek and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.  In 1952, Mancini joined the Universal Pictures music department. During the next six years, he contributed music to over 100 movies, most notably Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, It Came from Outer Space, Tarantula, This Island Earth, The Glenn Miller Story (for which he received his first Academy Award nomination), The Benny Goodman Story, and Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil. During this time, he also wrote some popular songs. His first hit was a single performed by Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians titled I Won’t Let You Out of My Heart.

Mancini left Universal-International to work as an independent composer/arranger in 1958. Soon afterward, he scored the television series Peter Gunn for writer/producer Blake Edwards. This was the genesis of a relationship in which Edwards and Mancini collaborated on 30 films over 35 years. Along with Alex North, Elmer Bernstein, Leith Stevens, and Johnny Mandel, Henry Mancini was a pioneer of the inclusion of jazz elements in the late romantic orchestral film and TV scoring prevalent at the time.  Mancini’s scores for Blake Edwards included Breakfast at Tiffany’s (with the standard “Moon River”) and Days of Wine and Roses (with the title song, “Days of Wine and Roses”), as well as Experiment in Terror, The Pink Panther (and all of its sequels), The Great Race, The Party, 10 (including “It’s Easy to Say”), and Victor Victoria.

Another director with whom Mancini had a longstanding partnership was Stanley Donen (Charade, Arabesque, Two for the Road). Mancini also composed for Howard Hawks (Man’s Favorite Sport?, Hatari! – which included the well-known “Baby Elephant Walk”), Martin Ritt (The Molly Maguires), Vittorio de Sica (Sunflower), Norman Jewison (Gaily, Gaily), Paul Newman (Sometimes a Great Notion, The Glass Menagerie), Stanley Kramer (Oklahoma Crude), George Roy Hill (The Great Waldo Pepper), Arthur Hiller (Silver Streak), Ted Kotcheff (Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?), and others.  Mancini’s score for the Alfred Hitchcock film Frenzy (1972) in Bachian organ andante, for organ and an orchestra of strings was rejected and replaced by Ron Goodwin’s work.

Mancini scored many TV movies, including The Moneychangers, The Thorn Birds and The Shadow Box. He wrote many television themes, including Mr. Lucky (starring John Vivyan and Ross Martin), NBC Mystery Movie, What’s Happening!!, Tic Tac Dough (1990 version), and Once Is Not Enough. In the 1984–85 television season, four series featured original Mancini themes: Newhart, Hotel, Remington Steele, and Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Mancini also composed the “Viewer Mail” theme for Late Night with David Letterman.  Mancini composed the theme for NBC Nightly News used beginning in 1975, and a different theme by him, titled Salute to the President was used by NBC News for its election coverage (including primaries and conventions) from 1976 to 1992. Salute to the President was only published in a school-band arrangement, although Mancini performed it frequently with symphony orchestras on his concert tours.

Songs with music by Mancini were staples of the easy listening genre from the 1960s to the 1980s. Some of the artists who have recorded Mancini songs include Andy Williams, Paul Anka, Pat Boone, Anita Bryant, Jack Jones, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Connie Francis, Eydie Gorme, Steve Lawrence, Trini Lopez, George Maharis, Johnny Mathis, Jerry Vale, Ray Conniff, Quincy Jones, Sarah VaughThe Lennon Sisters, The Lettermen, Herb Alpert, Eddie Cano, Frank Chacksfield, WarrenQuincy Jones, Sarah Vaughn, Shelly Manne, James Moody  Covington, Percy Faith, Ferrante and Teicher, Horst Jankowski, Andre Kostelanetz, Peter Nero, Liberace, Mantovani, Tony Bennett, Julie London, Wayne Newton, Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra, Peggy Lee, and Matt Monro. The Anita Kerr Quartet won a Grammy award (1965) for their album “We Dig Mancini,” a cover of his songs. Lawrence Welk held Mancini in very high regard, and frequently featured Mancini’s music on The Lawrence Welk Show (Mancini made at least one guest appearance on the show).

Mancini recorded over 90 albums, in styles ranging from big band to light classical to pop. Eight of these albums were certified gold by The Recording Industry Association of America. He had a 20-year contract with RCA Victor, resulting in 60 commercial record albums that made him a household name among artists of easy-listening music. Mancini’s earliest recordings in the 1950s and early 1960s were of the jazz idiom; with the success of Peter Gunn, Mr. Lucky, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Mancini shifted to primarily recording his own music in record albums and film soundtracks. Relatively little of his music was written for recordings compared to the amount that was written for film and television. Beginning with his 1969 hit arrangement of Nino Rota’s A Time for Us (as his only Billboard Hot 100 top 10 entry, the #1 hit “Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet”) and its accompanying album A Warm Shade of Ivory, Mancini began to function more as a piano soloist and easy-listening artist primarily recording music written by other people. In this period, for two of his best-selling albums he was joined by trumpet virtuoso and The Tonight Show bandleader Doc Severinsen.

Among Mancini’s orchestral scores are Lifeforce, The Great Mouse Detective, Sunflower, Tom and Jerry: The Movie, Molly Maguires, The Hawaiians, and darker themes such as Experiment in Terror, The White Dawn, Wait Until Dark, The Night Visitor.  Mancini was also a concert performer, conducting over fifty engagements per year, resulting in over 600 symphony performances during his lifetime. He conducted nearly all of the leading symphonies of the world, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, the Boston Pops, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. One of his favorites was the Minnesota Orchestra, where he debuted the Thorn Birds Suite in June 1983. He appeared in 1966, 1980 and 1984 in command performances for the British Royal Family. He also toured several times with Johnny Mathis and also with Andy Williams, who had each sung many of Mancini’s songs; Mathis and Mancini collaborated on the 1986 album The Hollywood Musicals. In 1987 he conducted an impromptu charity concert in London in aid of Children In Need. The concert included Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture with firework accompaniment over the River Thames.

In the 1966 Pink Panther cartoon Pink, Plunk, Plink, the panther commandeered an orchestra and proceeded to conduct Mancini’s theme for the series. At the end, the shot switched to rare live action, and Mancini was seen alone applauding in the audience. Mancini also had an uncredited performance as a pianist in the 1967 movie Gunn, the movie version of the series Peter Gunn, the score of which was originally composed by Mancini himself. In addition, Mancini made a brief appearance in the title sequence of 1993’s Son of the Pink Panther, allowing the panther to conduct Bobby McFerrin in performing the film’s theme tune. Shortly before his death, he made a one-off cameo appearance in the first season of the sitcom series Frasier, as a call-in patient to Dr. Frasier Crane’s radio show. Mancini voiced the character Al, who speaks with a melancholy drawl and hates the sound of his own voice, in the episode “Guess Who’s Coming to Breakfast?”  Moments after Mancini’s cameo ends, Frasier’s radio broadcast plays “Moon River” to underscore a particularly heartfelt apology.  Mancini died of pancreatic cancer in Los Angeles on June 14, 1994.

The following works by Henry Mancini are contained in my collection:

Academy Award Selections (Best Song Winners).

The Ballerina’s Dream.

Beaver Valley Suite.

Cameo for Violin.

Days of Wine and Roses (1962): Theme.

The Disaster Movie Suite.

Dream of a Lifetime.

Drummers’ Delight.

Foreign Film Festival.

The French Collection.

The Great Waldo Pepper: March.

Music by Nino Rota.

The Music of David Rose.

Music From Hollywood.

Peter Gunn Meets Mr. Lucky suite.

The Pink Panther: Theme.

Speedy Gonzales.

Strings on Fire!

What Did You Do in the War, Daddy: In the Arms of Love. 5

The White Dawn: Symphonic Suite.

 

 

Georg Muffat and his 12 Concerti Grossi

Georg Muffat (June 1, 1653 –February 23, 1704) was a Baroque composer who is most well known for the remarkably articulate and informative performance directions printed along with his collections of string pieces Florilegium Primum and Florilegium Secundum (First and Second Bouquets) in 1695 and 1698.  Muffat was born on June 1, 1653, in Megève, Duchy of Savoy (then considered part of Germany but now in France).  His parents were of Scottish descent. He showed unusual musical talent as a child, and as a boy of age ten he was sent to Paris to study for six years, between 1663 and 1669, where his teacher is often assumed to have been Jean Baptiste Lully, largely based on his statement “For six years … I avidly pursued this style which was flowering in Paris at the time under the most famous Jean Baptiste Lully.”  This is ambiguous as to whether the style was flourishing under Lully, or that Muffat studied under Lully.  In any case, the style which the young Muffat learned was unequivocally Lullian and it remains likely that he had at least some contact with the man himself.

After six years of instruction with that master and others, Muffat began studies at the Jesuit-run college in Séléstat, Alsace, in 1669.  Leaving there, Muffat became an organist in Molsheim, through which the Strasbourg Cathedral functioned in exile, and Sélestat. Later, apparently not wholly satisfied with his career up to this point, by 1674 he moved to Bavaria and studied law in Ingolstadt, where he graduated.   His return to his family in Alsace was soon ended by war, and he fled to Vienna, where he settled for a time, finding a patron in Emperor Leopold I. However, he could not get an official appointment, so he travelled to Prague in 1677, then in 1678 to Salzburg to take up the appointment of organist and player in the chamber ensemble, where he worked for the Archbishop Gandolf, Count of Kuenberg, for some ten years. In about 1680, he was granted leave and traveled to Italy, there studying the organ with Bernardo Pasquini, a follower of the tradition of Girolamo Frescobaldi; he also met Arcangelo Corelli, whose works he admired very much, and was greatly influenced by him. Muffat’s Armonico tributo, a collection of five sonatas for strings and basso continuo notable for its five-part string writing and mixture of French and Corellian influences, dates to this period.

Muffat returned to Salzburg two years later, but after the death of the archbishop in 1687, he found the atmosphere uncongenial. In 1690 he was in Augsburg for the coronation of Emperor Leopold’s eldest son, Joseph, as Roman king.   Muffat dedicated his solo organ composition, Apparatus musico-organisticus, to Emperor Leopold and presented him with a copy.  In 1690 Muffat’s son, Gottlieb (d. 1770), was born.  He was to remain in that part of the world where he served as Kapellmeister at the court of Johann Philipp of Lamberg, Bishop of Passau, and tutor to the pages in the court, to his death on February 23, 1704.  In 1695, the composer produced the first of his important Florilegia orchestral suites, the Suavioris harmoniae instrumentalis hyporchematicae florilegium primum, which was comprised of seven suites. Three years later he produced the second set, Florilegium secundum, which consisted of eight suites for orchestra. Among his last important works was the 1701 collection of 12 concerti grossi, entitled Ausserlesene Instrumental-Music.

Muffat was, as Johann Jakob Froberger before him, and Handel after him, a cosmopolitan composer who played an important role in the exchanges between European musical traditions. As a composer Muffat was to marry the Italian, French and German school of composition in a number of orchestral and instrumental works. The orchestral suites of the Florilegia, unusual because, though written by a German composer, they are fashioned in the French style, featuring dance music divulging the influence of Muffat’s teacher, Lully, are considered among the finest scores written in Germany in the second half of the 17th century. His influence on music in his native country was considerable, his son Gottlieb becoming the finest organist of his time, and he was one of the outstanding composers of the German Baroque period.  Though known primarily for several instrumental collections, he also wrote operas  (“Marina Armena”; “Königin Marianne die verleumdete Unschuld”; “La fatali felicità di Plutone”), though none have survived, and several religious works, notably three masses.

My collection includes the following works by Georg Muffat:
Concerto Grosso No. 1 in dm, Bona nova.

Concerto Grosso No. 2 in AM, Cor vigilans.

Concerto Grosso No. 3 in BM, Conalescentia.

Concerto Grosso No. 4 in gm, Dulce somnium.

Concerto Grosso No. 5 in DM, Sacculum.

Concerto Grosso No. 6 in am, Quis Hic?.

Concerto Grosso No. 7 in EM, Deliciae regum.

Concerto Grosso No. 8 in FM, Coronatio Augusta.

Concerto Grosso No. 9 in cm, Victoria Maesta.

Concerto Grosso No. 10 in GM, Perseverantia.

Concerto Grosso No. 11 in em, Delirium Amoris.

Concerto Grosso No. 12 in GM, Propitia Sydera.

Burrill Phillips and Selections from McGuffey’s Reader

Burrill Phillips (November 9, 1907 – June 22, 1988) was an American composer, teacher, and pianist.  Phillips was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He studied at the Denver College of Music with Edwin Stringham and at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, with Howard Hanson and Bernard Rogers. On September 17, 1928, he married Alberta Phillips, who wrote many of his librettos and died in 1979. The couple had a daughter, Ann (b. 1931) who became known as actress Ann E. Todd, later Ann Basart, and a son, Stephen (1937–1986), who predeceased his father. Due to privations caused by the Great Depression, the children, Ann and Stephen, were raised by their maternal grandparents.

Phillips taught composition and theory at Eastman (1933–49), the University of Illinois (1949–64), the Juilliard School of Music (1968–69), and Cornell University (1972–73).   Phillips’s first important work was Selections from McGuffey’s Reader, for orchestra, based on poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.  He wrote of this work in his 1933 diary, “I don’t think anybody had written such ‘American-sounding’ music before. On the first night, the students said it was corny. And it was. But I didn’t care, because it was a huge success.”  In his 1943 diaries, he looked back at his “Courthouse Square” (1935) and is struck by “the poor scoring and the clichés and triviality of the material. There is almost self-conscious simplicity, not to say idiocy, about it. Too sweet, although the vitality of rhythm is there. But it wasn’t a bad way to begin a career.”

Phillips received Guggenheim fellowships in 1942–43 and again in 1961–62.   By the 1940s, had turned to a more astringent and expressive idiom. In 1942, he wrote in his diary, “I have decided that my slow movements from now on are going to be different; they are going to play for keeps and not just be soft, sensuous, tender, delicious, delicate, dramatic, or dark. No more warm middle-western summer-night scenes, but the cool, stormy, volcanic, passionate stretches of the soul.” He commented in his 1944 diary, “I want something with more bite to it, with an ache and some force. I want the structure of this work to be evident. I want to use some of the elements of the mind in working it out, such as fugue, passacaglia, etc. I want to write with humor or wit in some parts—another function of mind. The underlying emotional warmth, however, must always be there.”

In 1960 Phillips’ String Quartet Number Two was premiered at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. by the Paganini Quartet, with the composer present, and broadcast on live FM radio. He was a Fulbright Lecturer in Barcelona, Spain, in 1960–61.  In the early 1960s he turned to free serial techniques, less sharply accented rhythms, and increasing fantasy. In his 1987 diaries, he wrote, “Yesterday, I read about [Elliott] Carter’s Double Concerto for piano and harpsichord. I find I am developing a type of chordal structure similar to his, but I never knew anything about this phase of his before reading about it. I certainly don’t feel attracted to his rhythmic style, but the widespread open distribution of intervals in the chords and the cluster forms and inversions are very much what I have been doing. I hadn’t, until lately, done anything to arrive at a new chordal style because of my predominant drive for linear motion, thematic or contrapuntal.”

Phillips wrote, in 1983, of his musical influences: “The first music of a serious nature I was introduced to as a child was the 2- and 3-part inventions of Bach. Then Haydn and Chopin. All of these are simple and clear, and their harmonic content is not obscured by an elaborate overlay of either contrapuntal virtuosity or chromatic sugaring. After college I emerged with a fairly self-recognized set of preferences: Scarlatti, Soler, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz, Debussy, Stravinsky—all those whose attitude toward the sonic portion of music is one of making things clear and strong-flavored.”  His students include Jack Beeson, William Flanagan, Kenneth Gaburo, Ben Johnston, H. Owen Reed, Daria Semegen, Steven Stucky, David Ward-Steinman, and Charles Whittenberg.  He died in Berkeley, California on June 22, 1988, aged 80, of complications after a heart attack. His scores and sketches are housed in the Burrill Phillips archive, Special Collections, Sibley Library, Eastman School of Music, Rochester, New York.

The following work by Burrill Phillips is contained in my collection:

Selections from McGuffey’s Reader.

Final installment of “New Testament Stories My Daddy Told Me”

New Testament Stories My Daddy Told Me

JOHN’S FINAL VISIONS (Revelation chapters 6-22)

By Wayne S. Walker

     After seeing a vision of the resurrected Jesus, writing letters to seven churches in the province of Asia, and getting a glimpse into heaven of God upon the throne and the Lamb coming to open the scroll, the apostle John begins to record his final visions with highly figurative, symbolic language in order to give comfort and encouragement to saints suffering persecution.   The Lamb loosens the seven seals, and with the seventh seal there sound seven trumpets, all of which announce chastisements on the persecuting powers, but they refuse to repent.  The seventh seal then begins a great drama.

A woman gives birth to a man-child.  A great dragon, identified as the devil or Satan, tries to destroy the child, but the boy escapes, and the dragon persecutes the woman and her offspring.  He calls upon a beast from the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and a beast from the earth, who causes all people to have a mark, to assist him, but seven bowls or vials of judgment are poured out.  As a result, the scarlet woman, called Babylon the Great, who is sitting on the beast of the sea, falls as Christ, called Faithful and True and riding a white horse, leads his armies, clothed with white linen, in victory, and Satan is bound.

Following this, there is a picture of the final judgment, followed by a description of the new heaven and new earth, which John identifies as the holy city, New Jerusalem, beside the river of life with the tree of life, where those who have done God’s commandments can enter through the gates of pearl to walk on the street of gold forever.  Some people think of this book as a kind of roadmap that foretells of specific events in history leading up to the end of time.  However, it is probably better simply to view it as a general portrayal of the overall spiritual battle between good and evil, especially as it played out in the Roman persecution of the early church, with a promise of eternal life for all who would fight the good fight since then.   “Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”

Questions:

1. How many seals are there?
2. How many trumpets are there?
3. Who is the great dragon?
4. What are the two beasts which he calls to help him?
5. What is the scarlet woman on the beast called?
6. What is Christ riding?
7. What do Christ’s armies wear?
8. What is the name of the holy city in the new heaven and earth?

Myers Schoolhouse, Sharon Woods Heritage Village Museum

Myers Schoolhouse

Sharon Woods Heritage Village Museum

11450 Lebanon Road

Sharonville, OH 45241

Sharon Woods Heritage Village Museum is a living history museum located in Cincinnati, Ohio, depicting life in Southwestern Ohio through-out the 19th Century.  Interpreters at the museum provide the facts and stories that bring the Village to life with nostalgic glances of days gone by.  During special events at the Village interpreters demonstrate some of the historic tasks and crafts of the 19th century such as spinning, weaving, candle-dipping, soap making, hearth cooking, carpentry work, herb lore, gardening, printing, trade and bartering, and communication.  At Heritage Village Museum, visitors will experience the rural simplicity of a small town life as it was in Ohio during the 1800’s.  Volunteers and staff provide guided tours, supervise gift and book shop, coordinate special events, demonstrate traditional crafts and cooking and present educational programs for over 15,000 guests each year. Visitors can watch history come alive at Heritage Village Museum. Thirteen historic buildings, including homes, out-buildings, and equipment were saved from destruction and moved from other locations in the region to their present location on the museum grounds  to be preserved and aid in telling the story of our recent past.  The most recent building acquired by Heritage Village is the Myers Schoolhouse, a one-room schoolhouse which was located at 370 Neeb Road in Delhi Township. Built in 1891, it is named after Cornelius Myers, one of the first school trustees.  Myers Schoolhouse operated for 35 years until Delhi decided to consolidate its school districts in 1926. The school was then closed and put up for auction.  It was purchased by Henry and Emma Backus and the family continued to use the property until the mid 1980’s. The school was used as a family party house and occasional community center until 1958 when Henry and Emma’s son, Harry, used it as an interior decorating business.  In 1986, the Backus family sold the schoolhouse to Charles and Pauline Johnson, who used it as a vision therapy office. In 1990, the Johnson’s sold the schoolhouse to the College of Mount St. Joseph. The schoolhouse was then renovated and used as a community reading center. The schoolhouse was moved to Heritage Village in 2009.  Historic Southwest Ohio (HSO), a non-profit organization dedicated to preservation of 19th century life, operates the Heritage Village Museum in Sharon Woods Park.

http://www.greatparks.org/parks/sharon-woods/heritage-village-museum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritage_Village_Museum

http://www.heritagevillagecincinnati.org/

The Beatitudes of Parenting

The Beatitudes of Parenting
by Cindy Puhek

from Crosswalk Home Homeschool Newsletter (Monday, September 12, 2011)

Jesus’s Beatitudes are profound for many reasons, not the least of which is how applicable their lessons are to different life situations. One can apply the Beatitudes to find practical advice on how to be a godly husband, wife, employer, or employee, just to name a few possibilities. In this article, I would like to expound on the Beatitudes by applying their timeless lessons to parenting.

Read more:

http://www.crosswalk.com/family/parenting/the-beatitudes-of-parenting.html

Century Village Museum One Room Schoolhouse, Burton, OH

One Room Schoolhouse

Geauga County Historical Society and Century Village Museum

14653 East Park Street

Burton, OH 44021

This schoolhouse, built in the 1870s, is one of several historic buildings at Century Village Museum.  The Geauga County Historical Society is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to ensure that the history of Geauga County is preserved for the education and appreciation of present and future generations.  The fully restored Century Village Museum, located in Burton, Ohio, in the heart of Geauga County, is a gateway to the Burton Historic District, an area designated in the National Register of Historic Places whose sixty-five acres contain beautiful gardens and the best view in the county.  It is an authentic representation of a Western Reserve Village from 1798 to the end of the 19th century. The Museum contains over twenty historically authentic buildings, more than 15,000 museum artifacts that include original art from the 1800’s, antique furnishings, period textiles, and research materials, and a working farm with a sugar bush for making maple syrup.  Century Village Museum provides guided  tours, offers educational programs, and hosts numerous festivals and special events each year including the following:  Antique Power and Steam Show, Apple Butter Festival and Raccoon County Music Festival.  Students can learn about life in the 1800’s through a visit to five of the historic buildings, including a one-room schoolhouse, a general store, a community church, an early cabin, and a Victorian farmhouse.

http://centuryvillagemuseum.org/

Fela Sowande and the African Suite

Olufela (Fela) Obafunmilayo Sowande (May 29, 1905 –March 13, 1987) was a Nigerian musician, composer, and a jazz pianist, who was considered the father of modern Nigerian art music, and is perhaps the most internationally known African composer of works in the European “classical” idiom.  Sowande was born on May 29, 1905, at Oyo in Abeokuta, near Lagos, the son of Emmanuel Sowande, a minister and pioneer of Nigerian church music in the early 20th century.  Of Egba descent, the elder Sowande taught at St. Andrew’s College, a missionary institute in Nigeria which trained young people to become teachers. As a child Fela sang in the Choir of the Cathedral Church of Christ while studying at the C.M.S. (Church Missionary Society) Grammar School and at King’s College, Lagos.  The influence of his father and Dr T. K. Ekundayo Phillips (composer, organist and choirmaster) was an important factor in his early years. At that time, Sowande was a chorister and was introduced to new Yoruba works being introduced into the churches. During that period, he studied organ under Phillips (including works by Bach and European classical masters), and earned the Fellowship Diploma (FRCO) from the Royal College of Organists. At that time, he was also a bandleader, playing jazz and popular highlife music. All of these had considerable influence on his work.

In 1934 Sowande went to London to study civil engineering, but he was soon supporting himself as a jazz musician and was introduced to European classical and popular music. In 1936, he was solo pianist in a performance of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. He also played as duo-pianist with Fats Waller, and was theatre organist for the BBC as organist and Choirmaster at Kingsway Hall (unfortunately now demolished) London and as pianist in the 1936 production of Blackbirds. In 1939, he played organ in some recordings by Adelaide Hall and Dame Vera Lynn. He joined the R.A.F. In 1941, recording several entertainment discs of organ music for Forces overseas. Later, he studied organ privately under Edmund Rubbra, George Oldroyd, and George Cunningham and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists in 1943, winning the Limpus, Harding and Read Prizes.  He also won several prizes and obtained a Bachelor of Music degree at the University of London and became a Fellow of Trinity College of Music. He also worked as musical advisor for the Colonial Film Unit of the Ministry of Information during the Second World War, providing background music for educational films

From 1945, Sowande was a renowned organist and choirmaster at the West London Mission of the Methodist Church until 1952, and a considerable amount of organ music dates from this period. These are based on Nigerian melodies that gave a special appeal to the Black members of his congregation in the early years of migration from the African continent and the Caribbean. Also during this time, he became known as a dance pianist, bandleader, and Hammond organist, playing popular tunes of the day.  Western and African ideas prevail in his music which included organ works such as Yorùbá Lament, Obangiji, Kyrie, Gloria, Jesu Olugbala, and Oba Aba Ke Pe. Most of these show a strong influence of Anglican Church music combined with Yoruba pentatonic melodies.  His orchestral works include Six Sketches for Full Orchestra, A Folk Symphony, and African Suite for string orchestra, and show African rhythmic and harmonic characteristics. He also wrote a significant amount of secular and sacred choral music, mainly a cappella. Some of these works were composed during his period with the BBC Africa Service.

In 1953, Sowande went back to Nigeria to scholarly work with the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation and later the University of Ibadan.  In this post he produced weekly radio programs based on field research of Yoruba folklore, mythology, and oral history, presented by tribal priests.  Also he held the title “Chief Bariyo of Lagos.”  Between 1955 and 1958, Sowande composed four songs based on African American gospel music.   A grant from the United States Government enabled Sowande to travel to the U.S. in 1957 and give organ recitals in Boston, Chicago and New York.  While in the country he also lectured on the findings of his research. The composer’s Nigerian Folk Symphony  of 1960 was his last major work.  In 1968 he moved to Howard University in Washington, D.C., then the University of Pittsburgh.  In the last years of his life Sowande taught in the Department of Pan-African Studies at Kent State University, and lived in nearby Ravenna, Ohio with his wife, Eleanor McKinney, who was one of the founders of Pacifica Radio. He died in Ravenna and is buried in Randolph Township, Ohio. There is currently a move to set up a center to research and promote his works, as many remain unpublished or are out of print.

My collection includes the following work by Fela Sowande:

African Suite (1930): Selections

Boredom by Barbara Frank

Boredom

by Barbara Frank

When our family first began homeschooling, I wanted every day to be chock-filled with discovery and wonder for my children. I pictured incredible, mind-blowing unit studies, fascinating books and curriculum, and countless field trips to get them out of the house a lot. I intended to provide so many worthwhile educational opportunities for them that they would never be bored.

To me, bored children signified failure on my part: failure to hold their interest, to keep them engaged in learning about the world around them. I had often experienced intense boredom as a child trapped in a school room. I did not want my children to feel that way.

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