“Kindermusik” Album for Father and Son

Having written yesterday about the “Holly, Jolly” spirit of Christmas at the Cadillac Hotel, I would now like to turn to a more secular approach to having fun with making music. The “makers” are probably familiar to most readers, the more familiar being Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He shares a new harmonia mundi album, entitled Kindermusik [children’s music], with his father Leopold. While the overall program is not necessarily a coherent one, it lives up to the advance material I received, describing it as an exploration of “the mischievous world of the Mozarts, father and son.”

By way of disclaimer, I should begin by observing that I first came to know one of the selections on this album in my very early childhood, quite some time before I took my first music lessons. At that time I knew it as the “Toy Symphony,” composed by Joseph Haydn. As I grew older, I learned that it was the composer’s younger brother, Michael Haydn, that was the composer, followed only a little later by the discovery that the symphony’s three movements were previously found in the seven-movement G major cassation by Leopold. Thus, he takes full credit for the music on the new Kindermusik album, to which he also contributes the opening selection, a five-movement suite entitled Die musikalische Schlittenfahrt (a musical sleigh ride).

Each of these compositions is followed by a work by Leopold’s better-known son. The “sleigh ride” suite leads into K. 239, the “Serenata notturna;” and the “program” of the album concludes with the K. 522 “musical joke” (given the title “Ein musikalischer Spaß”). Thus, one may view the entire album as a “ride,” which concludes the journey with a raucous sense of humor. (When I say “raucous,” I single out the cadenza that gives the “last word” in K. 522.)

Cover of the album being discussed (from its Amazon.com Web page)

I must confess that this is the sort of music that is more fun in performance than on recording. Nevertheless, I was delighted to see how nicely the spirit of the music was captured in the design of the album cover. The chaotic array of toys could not be more apposite, while the black cat works his way along the bottom of the album hoping that he will not be blamed for the chaos. Any “secret Santa” that has to provide a gift for a music lover would do well to consider this Kindermusik album as an option!