I spent yesterday and this morning working on those plans.
They didn't listen to enough music last year. I didn't force appreciation on them. I also didn't really find a way for them to appreciate the unfamiliar much.
This year I am starting each class for the first month with recordings of Gustavo Santaolalla's guitar pieces. (heard here if you are so inclined)
It's guitar. He writes a lot for tv and film so the sounds will be familiar. Nothing is longer than 4 minutes so I can keep their attention. He writes in clear AB and sometimes C form. He changes meter and dynamics. This will give us an introduction to the vocabulary of describing what is heard and practicing purposeful listening. My only hope is that I don't hear someone say "there's 5 minutes of my life I'll never get back"
I'll follow the unit of the plans I developed for the first quarter, exploring the elements of music, starting with melody and moving to rhythm. When the Santaolalla part is over, I'm developing a unit for the month of October called "Classical Music is Scary"
More listening but now more complicated and hopefully just accessible enough because of the whole Halloween connection.
Things I have learned in the process of compiling the Halloween business.
Night on the Bald Mountain is about the Witches Sabbath on the Summer Solstice.
Dance Macabre is about skeletons leading people to their death with the general idea that we are all equal in death.
The guy who composed the music to the original Psycho was cranky and hot-tempered and also composed the music to the Twilight Zone
The scene in the Shining where Danny Torrence rides the big wheel in the hallways is as terrifying in isolation as it is within the context of the movie. It is made more so by Bela Bartok's piece Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste (mvt 3)
Don Giovanni is the Italian version of Don Juan. And the story really is, after he seduces all of the women he can find, the dead father - the Commandatore(who Don killed) of one of them comes to life at dinner and drags him to hell.
Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King is about trolls, gnomes and goblins punishing Peer Gynt for seducing a young girl. In the play the lyrics are.
Slay him! The Christian man’s son has seduced the fairest maid of the Mountain King!
Slay him! Slay him!
May I hack him on the fingers?
May I gug him by the hair?
Hu, hey let me bite him in the haunches!
Shall he be boiled into grothe and bree to me:
Shall he roast on a spit or be browned in a stewpan?
Ice to your bood, friends!
Yikes.
The two note theme in the movie Jaws plays every time the shark appears EXCEPT for the final scary part at the end. The predictable music and then lack thereof is used to created even more surprise.
Who knew?
No comments:
Post a Comment