What’s the best way to get your kids to be obedient? Lie to them, of course! Tell them frightening tales of monsters who will get them if they don’t do what they are told. So, when you read fairy tales or nursery rhymes to your children, be sure you are reading the REAL ones – not the updated happy-lovey versions. You know, the one where Rumpelstiltskin rips himself in half, or Hansel & Gretel cook the witch, or the evil scissor-guy cuts off the thumbs of the thumb-sucker.

Shortly after the Brothers Grimm published their collected stories (in German), a guy named Erben published similar set of fairy-tale poems in Czech. Antonín Dvořák, being a nationalistic composer of the Czech people, composed music after the poetry. “The Noonday Witch” is a tone poem in which the story is clearly laid out by the music:

A mother scolds her baby for making so much noise; she complains about what a nuisance he is. She threatens to call the “noon witch” to come and take him away if he doesn’t do as she asks. Whether or not the witch comes is up to interpretation – but either way, the mother becomes frightened that the witch has arrived and is about to steal her child. She clutches the child close to her breast, and faints. When the woman’s husband arrives home, he finds his wife passed out on the floor, and his child dead in her arms – suffocated by the mother’s hold.

If you are a mother or like a mother to someone, Happy Mother’s Day!

Antonín Dvořák wrote a sweet little song which is perfect for this day. “Songs My Mother Taught Me” describes the tender voice of the author’s mother singing songs with tears in her eyes – and now the teary-eyed author is singing those same songs to her child.

One of the challenges of being a composer is finding that sweet spot where good music lies. If your style is too conservative, audiences will be bored – they’ve heard this before. If you writing is too progressive, audiences will put off – they don’t understand it. There’s also an argument that there is a finite number of melodies that can be composed, and what does one do when they’re all used up?

Sometimes, the best stuff is the simplest stuff. The main theme to the second movement of Dvořák‘s New World Symphony is so simple that it might as well be a nursery rhyme or a preschool song. But it continues to stir the souls who hear it, over a century after it was composed. It’s a bit to the right of the sweet spot, but boy is it sweet.

Sweet.