Spartan Profiles: Anna Celenza

CLASSICAL MUSIC MADE EASY

            Classical music is not the easiest thing to teach children, but an MSU musicologist might have found just the right formula. Anna Celenza, assistant professor of musicology, has pioneered a new learning tool that combines story telling with memorable characters, vibrant illustrations, and a compact disc featuring a classical music work.

            “The Farewell Symphony,” available in most bookstores or Amazon.com, features Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 45. “There are some books for children out there, but they always approach it from a history viewpoint,” explains Celenza, a native of Greensboro, NC. “’Who is Mozart?’ “What is an oboe?’ This is a story book that tells the story of one piece of work—how it fit with the culture of the times, how the music evolved through all four movements. The important thing is that kids are excited by this kind of approach.”

            And so are parents, who Anna hopes will read the book to their children (and perhaps learn a few things themselves as well). “My hope is that this will be a shared experience by parent and child,” says Anna. She will soon publish her first scholarly work,

            The Early Works of Niels W. Gade: In Search of the Poetic (Ashgate, 2001), and is working on another book comparing Hans Christian Andersen’s works to the music aesthetics of the era. But she looks at the book/CD for children as a true form of outreach, and will soon produce a second tome on Mussorsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition.

            Anna obtained her master’s and Ph.D. degrees at Duke, where she struggled to get basketball tickets. “They’re just as hard to get at MSU,” she says with a chuckle. “But both my husband and I enjoy being at MSU. Everyone, the students and the alumni, really love the university and respect the place, so it’s a real nice atmosphere.”

            For more information about “The Farewell Symphony,” visit www.charlesbridge.com.