SoNA ImagiMusic Presents. SoNA Sets the Scene! TEACHER GUIDE. SoNA Sets the Scene - Teacher Packet 1

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1 SoNA ImagiMusic Presents SoNA Sets the Scene! TEACHER GUIDE SoNA Sets the Scene - Teacher Packet 1

2 Introduction: We are delighted that your school is going to host us for SoNA s ImagiMusic workshop entitled, SoNA Sets the Scene! The Walton Family Foundation, Windgate Foundation and WalMart Northwest Arkansas Giving provide funding for ImagiMusic, allowing us to reach over 1800 students in our community. This program will introduce your students to the symphonic world of music while reinforcing skills in improvising, listening, and composing. Using settings in Art and Music as a foundation, our goal is to actively engage students, helping them to recognize that sounds around us can be manipulated by musicians to create mood, emotion, atmosphere, and action in literature and our own lives. This resource packet is intended as a supplement to the workshops presented. Feel free to utilize some or all of the material to enrich our visits with your class! We look forward to seeing you soon! Best Wishes, Kristen Predl, Education Director SoNA Symphony of Northwest Arkansas SoNA Sets the Scene - Teacher Packet 2

3 Contents: The Performers 4 The Music 5 Tying in Art and Culture 6 The Paintings 7 Classroom Activity 11 Instruments of the Orchestra 12 Test Your Knowledge! 13 Symphony of Northwest Arkansas History 14 Accompanying CD Track Listing: Track 1 1:03 Rhythm, Bass Line, Melody Examples Track 2 24:42 Dvorak: Symphony No. 9 From the New World Mvt. 1 Adagio Allegro Molto Track 3 3:33 Vivaldi Four Seasons: Spring - Allegro Track 4 5:24 Vivaldi Four Seasons: Summer Allegro non Molto Track 5 4:48 Vivaldi Four Seasons: Fall - Allegro Track 6 3:30 Vivaldi Four Seasons: Winter Allegro non Molto SoNA Sets the Scene - Teacher Packet 3

4 The Performers Antonio Vivaldi ( ) was born in Venice, Italy, which is where he spent most of his life. His father taught him to play the violin, and the two would often perform together. He taught at an orphanage for girls, and wrote a lot of music for the girls to play. People came from miles around to hear Vivaldi's talented students perform the beautiful music he had written. Many people think Vivaldi was the best Italian composer of his time. He wrote concertos, operas, church music and many other compositions. In all, Antonio wrote over 500 concertos. His most famous set of concertos is The Four Seasons. Antonin Dvorak ( ) was born in a village just north of Prague. He was the oldest of nine children. His father was a butcher, and he wanted Antonin to become a butcher, too. Fortunately, an uncle noticed how musical Antonin was, and paid for him to take organ lessons. Dvorak got a job as a church organist, but what he really wanted to do was compose. So he entered his compositions in a governmentsponsored contest and won! The prize money allowed Dvorak to quit his church job, and made him well known as a composer. In spite of the fact that he never took composition lessons, Dvorak taught composition at the Prague Conservatory. And he also taught in New York City for a couple of years. The last of Dvorak's nine symphonies was written in the United States, and is nicknamed for the fact that it hails "From the New World." SoNA Sets the Scene - Teacher Packet 4

5 The Music In our workshops we will talk about the building blocks of music. Please feel free to try these simple examples of Melody, Rhythm, and Bass line with your class. These examples will also be introduced in workshops. Listen to Track 1 for the examples. The Building Blocks of Music Are Like a House Taken from Vivaldi s Spring - The Four Seasons: THE BASS LINE: Our house sits on very firm ground. It has to be built on hard ground, not soft or the whole building would collapse! Just like building a piece of music, the music has to start from the ground up! The BASS LINE is the strong firm ground to a piece of music. The BASS LINE is low and slow. THE RHYTHM: Our house needs to be built of a strong material like bricks. If we didn t have bricks to build our house the wind could blow it away! The RHYTHM in a piece of music is what holds the music together. The RHYTHM is the structure to a piece of music THE MELODY: Our house needs to have a roof to keep the weather out! Just like the roof, the MELODY sits on top of the piece of music. Another word for a MELODY is a tune. SoNA Sets the Scene - Teacher Packet 5

6 Tying in ART and CULTURE Arthur Fitzwilliam Taite: A Tight Fix Bear Hunting, 1856 Eastman Johnson: Cranberry Pickers, 1879 Listen to the first movement of Dvorak s New World Symphony with your class and display the two art works above. Discuss how these paintings might reflect the music heard in this movement. WHAT IS GOING ON IN THE PICTURE/MUSIC? WHAT DO YOU SEE/HEAR THAT MAKES YOU SAY THAT? WHAT MORE CAN WE FIND? In our workshops in your classroom we will discuss settings in Art, Music, and Literature. The paintings on the following pages will be utilized during the workshops. Students will compose music in small groups to go along with the painting s setting. All of these paintings can be found at our very own Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR. Included in this packet is a recommendation letter to pass along to your school s principal and art teacher. For further enrichment and to schedule a free tour for your class to visit Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art please visit this website: CULTURE: Spirituals Dvořák was interested in Native American music and the African-American spirituals he heard in America. As director of the National Conservatory he encountered an African-American student who sang traditional spirituals to him and said that Dvořák had absorbed their 'spirit' before writing his own melodies. Dvořák stated that he regarded the symphony's second movement as a "sketch or study for a later work, either a cantata or opera... which will be based upon Longfellow s poem The Song of Hiawatha. Dvořák never actually wrote such a piece. He also wrote that the third movement scherzo was "suggested by the scene at the feast in Hiawatha where the Indians dance". SoNA Sets the Scene - Teacher Packet 6

7 The Paintings During our visit we will discuss the four seasons utilizing these paintings. These paintings from each category can be found at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville. Feel free to familiarize your class with Vivaldi s Four Seasons prior to our visit. This music will be utilized in the workshops. SoNA Sets the Scene - Teacher Packet 7

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11 Classroom Activity: Creating Graphic Scores This activity could also be done in conjunction with your school s art teacher. Graphic notation is a way of writing down music using non-traditional symbols, images, shapes, colors, shading, and lines to indicate sounds. These images help manipulate how the musician interprets the score. Warm-Up: Singing Shapes Objective: Interpret a shape drawn in the air with your finger into sound/pitches Slowly trace a wavy line up and down in the air with your finger and follow it with your voice, like a siren. Now try it with a classroom percussion instrument. Brainstorm: Composing Choose a found object to base your composition off of. Could be an image, item, person, place, etc. You could even utilize one of the paintings in this packet from Crystal Bridges. As a class, make observations about the object s origin, story of existence, appearance: texture, shape, size, etc. Then decide as a group which observations might serve best in creating a piece of music. Next, brainstorm how we might transform those observations into a shape, design, or line, which will be interpreted into sound--- just like the warm up. Ask the class to demonstrate what each observation might sound like on their classroom percussion instrument and decide a graphic to go along with each. Begin to piece together each observation with its corresponding sound and graphic. Draw out the composition on large piece of paper, SMART board, or white board. Every time a new sound is added, perform the piece from the beginning. After working as a class to compose, students may wish to work in small groups or individually to create a graphic score. Mixed media and large paper could be utilized in conjunction with your school s art teacher SoNA Sets the Scene - Teacher Packet 11

12 Instruments of the Orchestra There are 75 musicians in the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas and they all play many different instruments. The instruments they play are split into 4 families or sections called strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion. These sections play together in different ways to make different sounds. The person that stands in front of the orchestra is called the conductor, or maestro. The conductor holds the baton and directs the musicians in the orchestra. You could have your class listen to different sounds of the instruments of the orchestra using online resources such as: Suggestion: Play listening games (Bingo, etc.) with the pictures of instruments below and have students group them into families. SoNA Sets the Scene - Teacher Packet 12

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14 Test Your Knowledge! The following page is a quiz meant to be used as a tool to evaluate your students after our visit! For Question 1, feel free to use Track 1 as a listening tool to display the examples of Bass Line, Rhythm, and Melody. Please administer this short quiz and share your class average score via with Kristen Predl, Education Director for SoNA at kristen@sonamusic.org. Thanks for your participation! Answer Key: 1. A setting is the location and conditions in which something takes place the environment in music, literature, art, and movies. 2. A 3. B 4. B SoNA Sets the Scene - Teacher Packet 14

15 Test Your Knowledge! Name: Teacher: Date: Fill in the 3 parts of a piece of music on the picture of the house and color them in. These are the three parts: MELODY, RHYTHM, and BASS LINE 1. What is a setting? Circle your answer. 2. What does ALLEGRO mean? A. Fast B. Slow C. Medium 3. What does ADAGIO mean? A. Fast B. Slow C. Medium 4. What does FERMATA mean? A. Play in a firm way B. Hold the note C. Stop playing SoNA Sets the Scene - Teacher Packet 15

16 Symphony of Northwest Arkansas History History The Symphony of Northwest Arkansas has been providing musical performances and educational opportunities to Northwest Arkansas since 1954 when it began as the North Arkansas Symphony. SoNA is comprised of approximately seventy-five auditioned musicians from nine states and The United Kingdom under the direction of Juilliard graduate Paul Haas. SoNA is a resident company of Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville. Mission SoNA brings great music to life in Northwest Arkansas. Vision SoNA exists to lead our audiences in an exploration of universal truths and beauty, through musical performances of uncompromising quality. SoNA Sets the Scene - Teacher Packet 16