A spontaneous lecture hall composition - "The Siegen Spring"
The red card stands for summer, the green for spring and the blue for winter - the children at the children's university were able to assign the music played to the corresponding seasons.
What a brilliant and sonorous conclusion to the spring season of the Siegen Children's University! "The sound of the seasons: What does music tell us about spring, summer, fall and winter?". Prof. Dr. Evelyn Buyken and Felix Ludewig from the Institute of Music at the University of Siegen laid the foundations for their lecture in advance: "You have to be able to listen, and you can be loud sometimes". The exercise followed: "Shout your names very loudly. And now whisper your names." Rubbing hands creates a buzz in the room. Rubbing is done according to instructions - sometimes the hands are down, sometimes up, sometimes the children rub in the left part of the auditorium, sometimes in the middle. On a hand signal - like a conductor - the hand rubbing stops.
Music plays. The children at the children's university use color cards to indicate which season they think is being set to music. Spring (green), summer (red) or winter (blue) are represented musically. And: the eight to twelve-year-olds had the right associations. Antonio Vivaldi composed the violin concertos "The Four Seasons". Who was Vivaldi? A composer with over 700 composed works, violinist, music and violin teacher, who was born in Venice in 1678. Why did he write the violin concertos? Evelyn Buyken: "He wanted to describe natural phenomena. What he heard in nature, he cheated into his music." Antonio Vivaldi used tools to make music. The girls and boys at the children's university got to know some of them with the help of piano interludes. There are short and long notes, low and high, played softly or louder, slowly or quickly. Vivaldi not only composed violin concertos for the seasons, he also wrote sonnets to accompany them. A sonnet is a short poetic form, usually consisting of 14 verses. Through his compositions, Vivaldi was able to evoke the environments, sounds and moods described in the sonnets. On summer: "Under the merciless sun of the season. Man and herd languish, the pine tree burns. The cuckoo begins to sing, and immediately the turtle dove and the goldfinch join in."
The children heard a number of natural phenomena from the music: birds, meadows, thunderstorms.... In winter, they heard the snowflakes falling in soft circles. Summer, fall, winter - spring was missing from the musical presentation of the seasons in the auditorium. Now the young audience became composers. They imitated birdsong and the cooing of doves. They made crocuses grow deep out of the ground and grow taller and taller. And they greeted spring as a canon: "Yeah!" The three-part composition "Siegener Frühling" was finished.
Evelyn Buyken and Felix Ludewig from the Institute of Music at the University of Siegen received a huge round of applause at the end of the spring season of the Children's University of Siegen, which this time featured five events on the theme of "The Seasons". The coveted children's university diplomas were also handed out after the last event.
The fall season of the Siegen Children's University will continue on September 1, 2026, 4 p.m., US - C 116 at the Lower Castle. On the last day of the summer vacations, there will be an experiment as part of the Siegen Children's University on the topic of "Europe". A family event has been scheduled to coincide with the transition from the vacations to school time. Parents, siblings and grandparents are also invited. The topic will be the European particle research institute, CERN in Geneva, with physicist Prof. Dr. Thomas Mannel.
We would like to thank the cooperation partners of the Children's University of Siegen - the University of Siegen and the Siegener Zeitung, as well as the sponsors, Sparkasse Siegen, the Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK) and Siegener Versorgungsbetriebe (SVB).
