Goldilocks and the Three Bears

In 1996, I was commissioned to compose Three Fun Fables for the Minnesota Orchestra?s Kinder Konzert series, which presents concerts for Narrator and Mixed Octet throughout the season. After 52 performances, they enjoyed the Fables enough to commission a sequel for the 2000-01 season. Goldilocks and the Three Bears was performed 52 times on Minnesota?s Kinder Konzerts in the 2000-2001 season in its original octet version, and the Philadelphia Orchestra?s new Next Step series gave a performance of the octet on March 1, 2002. Soon after composing the octet version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, I created an orchestral version and thought immediately of sending it to Sheldon Bair because he?s a great conductor, a great friend to living composers, and I also loved the idea of a Bair conducting music about bears. The Susquehanna Symphony performances are the world premiere of the new orchestral version. Goldilocks and the Three Bears is a traditional telling of the story for young audiences, with a positive twist at the end as Goldilocks apologizes to the bears and makes up for her misdeeds. To illustrate musical contrast between large, medium, and small, the three bears are identified by a shared theme, simple and direct, played quite differently by each of them. Papa Bear?s version is low and heavy, played by bass trombone; Mama Bear?s version is an elegant cello in mid-register, and Baby Bear barely manages to squeak out the theme on a high clarinet, sometimes punctuated by glockenspiel. A wide variety of high-medium-low and low-medium-high sequences are carried out in many ways throughout the whole story. Goldilocks is represented by a flute, often accompanied by harp; her ornate and delicate theme is very distinct from the bears? music, offering another type of musical contrast. Because the story is full of visual imagery and motion, Goldilocks and the Three Bears also lends itself well to dance, mime, puppetry, and other multimedia performance.