Twelve secondary school students with an excellent paper have been awarded the KNAW Education Prize. Each year, the jury selects these winners from the approximately 500 submitted papers, three winners per profile. Tim Povel of Hermann Wesselink College in Amstelveen was awarded with his paper The story of music for the Culture and Society profile. Brilliant, according to the jury. This piece comes with a bonus:Tim's own composition, performed by the school orchestra.
The KNAW Education Prize was created to encourage secondary education teachers and their students, the new generations of talented researchers, to set up research together. According to the KNAW, inspiring education is crucial to transfer the fascination for and knowledge of science.
More than 200 schools tried their luck. Together they sent in about 500 profile papers from their students (students are not allowed to do that themselves) with a nice letter of recommendation, from which a panel of education experts made a pre-selection.
The eventual KNAW jury of scientists from all kinds of disciplines then declared three papers per profile (Nature and Technology, Nature and Health, Economy and Society and Culture and Society) as winners. The jury members assessed the profile papers on, among other things, originality of the subject, the professional structure of the research and the scientific quality of the whole. No small task for high school students.
Telling a story with music
A notable winner this year is Tim Povel (Culture and Society). The now 18-year-old Tim started his profile assignment in the fifth year The story of music. In it he describes how he used two existing stories from the children's story collection Maybe they knew everything. 214 stories about the squirrel and the other animals van Toon Tellegen translated into a self-made music composition. He chose this collection of short stories with deeper layers. Before writing the piece of music, he first researched the way in which both writers of literature and composers of music use the leitmotif, a recurring musical theme that is often linked to certain emotions or people. Think of James Bond and his famous tune.
In his research, Tim analyzes the French musician Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) and his work. According to Tim, Berlioz first incorporated the leitmotif in 1830 in his composition Symphonie fantastique. In his profile paper, Tim provides an extensive analysis of this composition. On the basis of this analysis, he looks for useful elements as a leitmotif in Tellegen's work. He brings his research together in one storyline, and he also develops it into a new piece of music.
While working on his own music composition, Tim had to take into account the number of members of the school orchestra, their level and the available instruments. Ultimately, the composition was performed by twelve musicians from the school orchestra, including the rector.
In the prizes
Tim wrote this piece from his passion for music. Due to his physical limitation, he will never be able to play an instrument at a high level, but that does not stop him from composing his own music and chasing his dream:after the summer holidays he will study Composition at the Conservatory of Amsterdam. This is where his prize, 1500 euros to spend on his studies, comes in handy.
His two supervisors, Andrea Kunne (German) and Oeds van Middelkoop (Dutch), were very impressed by his paper and sent it to the KNAW jury. Kunne:“The story of the music is an incredibly high-level profile piece by a highly motivated student. Tim has a great sense of language and is a very handsome musician!” Tim received a well-deserved 9 from them for his work and also won the incentive prize of the Princess Christina Compostie Competition 2015. The teachers of the winning students also receive prizes at the KNAW Education Prize:they can travel together this year. to a cultural city in Europe.
The paper 'The story of music' can be downloaded from the KNAW website.