New Music Friday: The Picnic: Watch Out for the B’s

As a teacher, Ingrid Koller always looks for fun and engaging ways to teach a new skill. When students are learning how to tremolo, she often asks them to make their bow “buzz” like a bee.

That idea blossomed into The Picnic: Watch out for the B’s as she imagined an entire orchestra behaving like a swarm of bees. This piece tells the story of a picnic being interrupted by pesky bees. It begins lightheartedly enough with an uplifting jaunty melody. Our picnic-goers are happily enjoying themselves on a sunny day when suddenly they are interrupted by the buzzing of a bee.

Determined to enjoy the picnic despite an annoying bee or two, they resume their picnic, only to be interrupted again and again. As time goes on, more and more bees can be heard, and every section gets a turn. Listen for the sounds of the bees as they travel around the orchestra. Listen too for the pizzicato section where the picnic-goers try to tiptoe around so as not to disturb the bees. Eventually, the very large swarm of bees is too much for them, and at the end, the listener can hear them scrambling to run away.

The buzzing sounds are created when string players play tremolos on notes that are separated by a half step. For an added musical joke, most of the “buzzes” include the musical note B in the very dissonant cluster of notes. In addition to playing tremolos, the musicians are playing “sul ponticello” (on the bridge). This adds a raspy, edgy quality to the sound, making it even more unpleasant and unsettling.