The Kat Basket

Johannes Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem

The wonderful song "God is bigger than the Boogie Man", from Veggie Tales.

Sing a song of nightmare
of monsters in your dreams!
Four and twenty ravens
in chorus with your screams.
The doors refuse to open,
there are spiders in your hair,
but nothing less could hold you down
and give you such a scare!

I don't know whether this is what Poulenc had in mind when composing his Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani in G minor, but this is certainly how it has always sounded to me.

If you grew up in the 70's in England, you might recognize some of the movements in this music as the theme for the ITV programme, "The Book Tower".

When I was a little girl, one of the preschool activities I enjoyed most was what we used to call "Music and Movement".
I hope things haven't changed so much that people (particularly children) no longer dance, and I hope at some point to introduce my own grandchildren to the delights of freeform dance.

Track listing

From Pictures at an Exhibition, Mussorgsky

1. Gnome


2. Promenade


3. Bydlo (a Polish ox-cart)

(from Carnival of the Animals, Saint Saens

1. Royal March of the Lion


2. Elephant


3. Aquarium


4. Fossils


5. Swan

by Sergei Rachmaninov

Ottorino Respighi's music based on renaissance and baroque themes. To learn more about Ottorino Respighi and his music, visit my blog.

Track listing:
01 - Promenade
02 - Gnomus
03 - Promenade
04 - The Old Castle
05 - Promenade
06 - Les Jardins Tuileries
07 - Bydlo
08 - Promenade
09 - The ballet of the chicks in their shells
10 - Samuel Goldenberg
11 - Limoges
12 - Catacombae
13 - Cum mortuis in lingua mortua
14 - Baba Yaga's Hut on Chicken's Feet
15 - Design for the Great Gate of Kiev

When his friend, Viktor Hartmann, died suddenly in 1873, Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky attended a retrospective exhibition which inspired the idea of a suite of music. Perhaps, without the music, the pictures themselves might have been allowed to sink into obscurity, but the music, originally for solo piano, and later orchestrated by Maurice Ravel, has done much to ensure the reputation both of Mussorgsky, and Hartmann.

Ottorino Respighi's musical evocation of four key sites around Rome known for their pine trees.


(a) The Pines of the Villa Borghese


(b) The Pines above the Catacombs


(c) The Pines of the Janiculum


(d) The Pines of the Via Appia

Benjamin Britten's adaptation of a theme by Henry Purcell is used to introduce the various instruments, and instrumental types of a typical orchestra.