🗺️ Listening Maps
Follow the music! Pick a famous piece. Each stop on the map lights up as the band plays it, and I tell you what to listen for.
- In the Hall of the Mountain KingEdvard Grieg, 1875. 5 stops, about 80 seconds.
- Für EliseLudwig van Beethoven, 1810. 6 stops, about 70 seconds.
- The Stars and Stripes ForeverJohn Philip Sousa, 1896. 4 stops, about 90 seconds.
- William Tell Overture (the gallop)Gioachino Rossini, 1829. 5 stops, about 50 seconds.
- Can-CanJacques Offenbach, 1858. 4 stops, about 50 seconds.
- Eine kleine NachtmusikWolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1787. 6 stops, about 80 seconds.
- The EntertainerScott Joplin, 1902. 3 stops, about 80 seconds.
- Ode to JoyLudwig van Beethoven, 1824. 4 stops, about 80 seconds.
What is a listening map?
A listening map is a picture of a piece of music. It breaks the music into parts, so you know what is coming and what to listen for. Music teachers draw them on the board: a path for the tune, a big drum where it gets loud, a rabbit where it speeds up. Here each part is a stop on the map. When the band reaches a stop, it lights up and Peabody says what to listen for: “Listen, it’s getting faster!”, “Now it’s loud”, “The first tune is back.”
Listening for these changes is how musicians hear music. Tempo is how fast it goes, dynamics is how loud or soft it is, and form is how the parts are put together, like a tune that comes back again (A, B, A). At the end of each map there is one question with three big answers about what you heard.
Every piece here is in the public domain: it was written long ago, so it belongs to everyone. Peabody’s band plays each one from notes written out of a published score, a different band at some stops, so you can hear the instruments change too. Read about the people who wrote them on the composer cards, or play the listening games.
For grown-ups: nothing is typed and nothing is sent. Nothing plays until a tap, and the music follows the sound switch and the music switch. These are Peabody’s own synthesizer versions, simplified to one tune line, not recordings of an orchestra.