Musical Mondays

SCO Violinist David Chadwick has been working with SCO Connect on a new project: Musical Mondays

My new favourite way to spend a Monday is to have a ‘Musical Monday’ at the Scottish National Gallery. This is a new joint project from SCO Connect and the National Galleries of Scotland, enjoying the inexhaustible cross-fertilisation between art and music.

At 10am, with today’s P6 class from Juniper Green Primary School itching to get started, our session kicks off with a walk through the gallery to the two paintings we are to focus on, Nasmyth’s A View of Tantallon Castle with the Bass Rock and William McTaggart’s The Storm. Paula and Rosie from the National Galleries lead us on an adventure into the paintings, immediately sparking 30 young imaginations. I’ve probably spent several hours looking at these two paintings by now but still with each session I discover more, thanks to Paula and Rosie, not to mention today’s P6 class. Throughout, Paula and Rosie ask us to describe how the scenes might feel and sound, providing fuel for the next part of the session.

Then it’s time for some music-making. After a brilliant body-percussion warm-up (my co-ordination is slowly improving...) with Jo Fenna and a quick demo of my violin, we set out to learn how Beethoven went about depicting a storm in his Pastoral Symphony. Next, we split up into five small groups, each tasked with a different aspect of the McTaggart Storm upon which to base a short piece. Armed with selections from the vast array of SCO Connect percussion instruments as well as more body-percussion of course, our five groups set about creating a soundscape (or perhaps I should say stormscape).

Soon it is time to come back together to whip up an impressive musical storm in the gallery. We have musical representations of accelerating heartbeats, flashes of lightning and deep rumbles of thunder, the boat creaks and splinters, the wind howls and the sea rages. Whirly tubes fly above heads, ocean drums roll and feet stamp – in each group, the narrative is as convincing as in Richard Strauss.

Each group appoints one amongst their number to be the conductor and it is wonderful to see each brand-new conductor coming up with their own method of starting and stopping, as well as communicating changes in tempo and dynamics through gesture. What a talented bunch!

So, if you’re in the Scottish National Gallery on a Monday and hear a rumble of thunder but the sky outside is blue, chances are it’s a Musical Monday.