Kyle Kindred: Music

• MP3 play whole song, hi-fi (broadband)

“One of the greatest dignities of humankind is that each successive generation is invested in the welfare of each new generation.” Fred Rogers did not just speak these words (The World According to Mister Rogers [New York: Hyperion, 2003], 160); he spent a lifetime carrying them out by dedicating his many talents to the generations following his own. Known best by the endearing title of “Mister Rogers,” he has become a national icon, having pioneered the way for children’s educational television. For decades, Rogers began each new episode of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” by walking onto the set, singing a tune we all know by heart, and changing from an uncomfortable suit jacket and dress shoes into a cozy zip-up sweater and a pair of older, more worn-in shoes. The zip-up cardigan became a staple of the show, and later in life, Rogers would donate one of these sweaters to the Smithsonian Museum.
It interests me that each sweater used on the show was knitted personally by Rogers’ own mother. As he attempted to make each child feel comfortable, warm, and welcome each day in “the neighborhood,” he was using an item of comfort given to him by someone from a previous generation to his own. Herein lies the heart of what I have learned most from Rogers as an adult: each one of us has a responsibility to those who come after us. This idea of generations investing in generations provides the programmatic basis for the three movements of Beautiful Day.
The first movement, Smithsonian Sweater, is a movement about infancy and the comfort provided to a baby by its parents and other relatives. As a baby coming into the world, opening its eyes, and seeing its surroundings for the first time, instruments gradually are added and the high register of the opening becomes expanded into lower and lower ranges.
Hisher Boobtrunk is the name of a favorite ventriloquist dummy that belonged to Mister Rogers. This movement attempts to act out musically the process of learning between teacher and student through the imitation of melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic motives as well as timbres. The teacher, or ventriloquist, in this instance is the soloist, while the orchestra plays the part of the dummy.
The final movement, Trolly, is filled with motor-like passages, melodies, and accompaniments, intended to create the energy of a speeding locomotive while referencing the popular character from the television series. At some point in each episode, Trolly would take the viewers from the real world into the land of make-believe and back again. In both of these worlds on the show, Rogers presented children with situations addressing their own feelings, fears, and self-worth. . In composing this movement, I used Trolly to symbolize an unrelenting journey through lands of uncertainty, fears, and self-doubt that every child faces when trying to get along with other children, to feel comfortable with his or her own body-type, to take those first trips to the doctor, or to even avoid being sucked down the bathtub drain!