Music can help us learn about history! This lesson demonstrates to your students how music of the Baroque period reflects the importance of the institutions of State and Church, and the influence both had on the work of each composer.
Copland, an American maverick, becomes a storyteller as he writes about life in the early years of America. His Appalachian Spring helps students understand how people, places and things change over time, while his musical sketch reinforces the six traits of writing.
It’s a Fanfare! Almost every student has heard the fanfare at the beginning of an MGM production. Students will understand the basic elements of a fanfare, and the significant role fanfares have played in history as a means of communicating information and emotion
Students will discover how the love of music connected two important figures in world history: Benjamin Franklin, an American founding father, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, an Austrian composer. Additionally, students will begin to understand pitch, and how each note is calibrated to create its own unique sound.
This lesson shows students where rock music really began! Students will create musical instruments with objects from nature. Using their created instruments, students compose and perform a musical arrangement, while making connects with their knowledge of life during the Stone Age.
Students will gain an understanding of music’s relationship to the American, French and Russian revolutions. Students will also gain knowledge that music has changed over the last 200 years as a result of a musical revolution.
Through the use of music, students will make connections with the historical events in Colonial America and Europe during the early 19th century. Using the music of Sousa and Tchaikovsky, students will understand how music can become a patriotic symbol and help depict historical events.
Students deepen their understanding of the political and emotional events of the War of 1812 through the music of Tchaikovsky. Students will learn how different instruments are used for expressing a mood and illustrating events in history. Students will write a response to the music that informs about their own understanding of both the instrumentation and the important events of history.
Music was one way the soldiers of the American Civil War could both pass the time and remember home and family. They whistled or sang familiar songs while performing menial duties, and some played instruments such as harmonicas and fiddles during their free time. Students will compare and contrast a Union song and a Confederate song, and see firsthand what these soldiers were experiencing.
Students will learn to appreciate the beauty of the instruments in an orchestra, differentiate the sounds created by the instruments and relate the music to artwork Los Tres Musicos by Pablo Picasso, and the following exhibits at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum: The Guitar: Art, Artists and Artisans; The Power of Music - Photographic Portraits of Americans and their Musical Instruments 1860-1915.
Students will learn to recognize a five-tone scale. Students will sing or perform known American folksongs together in class. Advanced students will be able to identify all five pitches and even discern the actual pentatonic scale being used.
This lesson integrates language arts with visual and performing arts. Students immerse themselves in the world of the Russian folktale, The Firebird, and then explore other avenues of appreciating the tale through listening and dancing to Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, as well as engaging in theater and visual arts activities.