Aesop's Fables
Musical treatments
The commonest approach in building a musical bridge to children has involved using a narrator with musical backing. Following the example of Sergei Prokoviev in "Peter and the Wolf" (1936), Vincent Persichetti set six for narrator and orchestra in his Fables (Op. 23 1943). Richard Maltz also composed his Aesop's Fables (1993) to introduce the instruments of the orchestra to elementary students and to teach them about the elements of music, and Daniel Dorff's widely performed 3 Fun Fables (1996) has contrasting instruments interpreting characters: in "The Fox and the Crow" it is trumpet and contrabass; in "The Dog and Its Reflection" it is trombone and violin, harp and percussion; in "The Tortoise and the Hare" it is contrabassoon and clarinet. Others simply adapt the narrator's voice to a musical backing. They include Scott Watson's Aesop's Fables and Anthony Plog's set of five for narrator, horn and piano (1989).
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