On December 8th, the Dodd Middle School 8th Grade Orchestra played in our winter concert with the piece “Carol of the Bells”, arranged by Bill Calhoun. We played to our parents, grandparents, and siblings in the Dodd Gym and were conducted by Gina Hepp. The orchestra consists of violins (Violin I and Violin II), violas, and cellos.
“Carol of the Bells” was written by Mykola Dmytrovych Leontovych as a Ukrainian folk song in 1916, then called “Shchedryk”. In 1936, Peter J. Wilhousky rewrote the lyrics based on the melody of “Shchedryk”. This is the “Carol of the Bells” Christmas carol that many know today. This arrangement of the piece for string orchestra was made by Bill Calhoun around 2010. It contains the main melodies from the piece, while
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One strength there was was dynamics. When the main melody was played (during most of the piece), it was made sure that the correct dynamic marking was played, such as in measures 16, when the viola and cellos sections had a decrescendo and played much quieter. Another example of this is at measures 141-145, or the end of the piece. The entire orchestra crescendoed slightly but was really loud at measure 145, when the dynamic marking was fortississimo (three f’s). One weakness was blending. In measures 37-40, everyone was not together. There was some “echoing” of the main part, where one group/person could be heard playing behind everyone else, and this was somewhat noticeable. one way to fix this would be to practice playing with a metronome to keep everyone on time, or to practice fingerings so the people playing behind the rest of the group would be able to look up at the conductor during this section of the piece to stay on time with the rest of the group. I believe that, overall, the concert was a different experience for me. The new styles of music that were played and the difficult new techniques that were learned were very interesting. I also believe that the audience responded very well to the concert, given the compliments the orchestra received afterwards and the thunderous