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LESSON 1
Introduction to the Orchestra TEACHER WORKBOOK
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NORTH CAROLINA SYMPHONY EDUCATION SUPPORTERS
Our Education Concert is created in partnership with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction and is made possible by a generous grant-in-aid from the State of North Carolina, the Honorable Roy Cooper, Governor; the Honorable Susi H. Hamilton, Secretary for Natural and Cultural Resources. We express our gratitude to our Boards of Trustees: The Symphony’s mission to achieve the highest level of artistic quality and performance standards, and embrace the dual legacies of statewide service and music education, is led by the North Carolina Symphony Society, Inc., and the Symphony’s endowed funds are held by the North Carolina Symphony Foundation, Inc. EDUCATION SUSTAINERS
Anonymous Trust / Simple Gifts Fund EDUCATION BENEFACTORS
The Bastian Family Charitable Foundation
EDUCATION PATRONS
Anonymous; Robert P. Holding Foundation, Inc.; Samuel P. Mandell Foundation; Youths’ Friends Association Inc. EDUCATION PARTNERS
Gipson Family Foundation
Swearingen Foundation
Alamance County Government
Granville County Community Foundation
The Titmus Foundation
Arts Council of Carteret County
Gregory Poole Equipment
Vance County Community Foundation
The Harold H. Bate Foundation
The Hellendall Family Foundation of North Carolina
Yadkin County Community Foundation
Iredell County Community Foundation
MUSIC EDUCATION ENDOWMENT FUNDS
Beane Wright Foundation Bell Family Foundation Bertsch Family Charitable Foundation, Inc. The Borden Fund, Inc. Carteret Community Foundation Cherbec Advancement Foundation The Cole Foundation
Jacksonville-Onslow Council for the Arts Kinston Community Council for the Arts The Landfall Foundation The Noël Foundation Onslow Caring Communities Foundation Outer Banks Community Foundation
The Joseph C. and Diane E. Bastian Fund for Music Education The Ruby and Raymond A. Bryan Foundation Fund The Mary Whiting Ewing Charitable Foundation Fund
Corning Incorporated Foundation
Poole Family Foundation
The Hulka Ensemble and Chamber Music Programs Fund
Edna Williams Curl and Myron R. Curl Charitable Fund
Prescott Family Charitable Trust
The Janirve Foundation Fund
The Florence Rogers Charitable Trust
The Elaine Tayloe Kirkland Fund
Emily Monk Davidson Foundation
E.T. Rollins, Jr. and Frances P. Rollins Foundation
The Dickson Foundation, Inc.
The Norman and Rose S. Shamberg Foundation
The Ina Mae and Rex G. Powell Wake County Music Education Fund
The William C. Ethridge Foundation, Inc.
The Eddie and Jo Allison Smith Family Foundation, Inc.
Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey A. Corbett
The Lundy Fetterman Family Foundation Trust George Foundation, Inc.
Southern Bank Foundation
Authors: Barina Bailey, Zadda Bazzy, Emily Cannady, Laura Martin, Andrea, Perrone, Susan Reynolds Designer: Kimberly Ridge Editors: Sarah Baron, Jason Spencer, Layla Dougani, Erin Lunsford North Carolina Symphony, 3700 Glenwood Ave., Suite 130, Raleigh, NC 27612, 919.733.2750 ncsymphony.org/education North Carolina Symphony Student and Teacher Handbook © 2017, 2020 by North Carolina Symphony Society, Inc. Reproduction of this book in its entirety is strictly prohibited.
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INTRODUCTION
Listen to all the different instruments!
Antonín Dvořák
BORN September 8, 1841, Nelahozeves, Czech Republic DIED May 1, 1904, Prague, Czech Republic
Biography
featured work
Slavonic Dance, Op. 46, No. 8
fun facts He was a friend of Tchaikovsky.
As a young boy, Dvořák learned to play the violin. His father wanted Dvořák to be a businessman and sent his son to live with an uncle in Zlonice, Germany to study. While there he found an excellent music teacher who taught him to play piano and organ. His teacher and uncle recognized his musical ability and begged his father to allow him to go to Prague to study music. Dvořák was an excellent student. When he finished school he was given a job playing for the national opera under the direction of another composer, Bedřich Smetana. It was at this time he decided he wanted to become a composer. In 1873, he met composer Johannes Brahms, who persuaded his publisher to print Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances. The pieces brought him fame all over Europe. Dvořák was shy and his new-found fame made him uncomfortable. He preferred the privacy of the country to busy city life. Dvořák traveled to America in 1892 to teach in New York. While there he became interested in American folk music. Native-American and African-American music influenced much of his writing. Although he was making a salary of $15,000 a year (a large sum of money for that time), he was homesick and returned to his homeland after three years.
The notoriously hard to impress Johannes Brahms thought that Dvořák had more talent than Wagner and himself combined. Dvořák was a legend in his homeland and an international star during his lifetime.
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Dvořák’S LIFE • When he was 12 he went to live in Zlonice to learn German where a music mentor taught him piano, viola, organ, and beginning composition. • At age 16 he went to Prague to study organ. He graduated from the Prague Organ School in 1859. • He was an accomplished violinist and violist and joined the Bohemian Theatre Orchestra, where he spent most of the 1860s playing under the direction of Smetana. • While a member of the Opera Orchestra he played in premieres of several of Smetana’s operas including The Bartered Bride. • He fell in love with one of his pupils and even composed a song cycle for her, “Cypress Trees.” She married another man and Dvořák married her sister, Anna Cermakova on November 17, 1873. They had nine children. • He had a successful concert tour in Russia in 1890. • In 1892, Jeannette Thurber, the founder of the National Conservatory in New York, invited Dvořák to America. He accepted and served as Director of the Conservatory from 1892-95. • While in America he was interested in studying Native American and African American music. He used these ideas in his popular “New World” Symphony, which premiered in Carnegie Hall in December 1893. • Even though the position with the National Conservatory was financially rewarding, he was homesick and returned to Prague, where he became the director of the Prague Conservatory in 1901 and held the position until his death on May 1, 1904. • He died of arteriosclerosis. He was buried in the Vyšehrad cemetery in Prague. A bust by Czech sculptor Ladislav Šaloun marks his grave.
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FEATURED WORK: Slavonic Dance, Op. 46, No. 8
The Slavonic Dances are an example of Dvořák’s admiration for the folk music of Eastern Europe and his ability to create symphonic adaptations of this music. The piece is set in Rondo form, which incorporates a melody that keeps returning between contrasting sections. He modeled the dances after Brahms’ Hungarian Dances in his use of folk traditions. He composed original melodies influenced by his Bohemian and Moravian culture but not actual folk tunes. The Slavonic Dances were originally commissioned as piano duets, and Dvořák eventually orchestrated them. The Slavonic Dances, Op. 46, became an immediate success and spread Dvořák’s fame throughout Europe. He was especially popular in England. The dances in the first set (Op. 46) were mostly based on Czech dance forms and the second set (Op. 72) display his more developed symphonic style with richer harmonies. Slavonic Dances, Op. 46, No. 8 was used in an episode of the popular science-fiction television series, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Classroom activities provided by Andrea Perrone, New Hope Elementary, Orange County
CLASSROOM ACTIVITY #1: Listening for Leitmotifs North Carolina Essential Standards in Music:
4.MR.1.1 - Illustrate perceptual skills by moving to, answering questions about, and describing aural examples of music of various styles and cultures.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards:
ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.1 - Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text. Objectives: Students will demonstrate the ability to distinguish between musical leitmotifs (themes) through movement. Students will use evidence from the music to support creative movement that reflects the actions or personality of a character in the storyline of the musical piece. Materials: • North Carolina Symphony Education video • Accompanying slides • Student copies of listening map (slides 7-9), blank paper, writing utensil, and physical space! • VIRTUAL OPTION: Access to breakout rooms and chat features in video conferencing program; access to Google Jamboard interactive whiteboard Process: 1. Open the leitmotif slides. Ask students to sing the music they think of when they see the pictures on the slide – Jaws, Darth Vader, and Looney Tunes. Reference Peter and the Wolf if you have done this in the past with your students. 2. Introduce the four leitmotifs - Sylvester, Tweety, Bugs Bunny, and Granny. Click hyperlinks to direct you to a section in which the character’s leitmotif will play. 3. Have students fold a piece of paper into four quadrants and label each one with a character above. Students will write adjectives to describe the music they hear in each segment. You may want to provide a word bank (pitch, tempo, timbre, dynamics, etc) for students to choose from.
VIRTUAL OPTION: Screen share the word bank and have students type into the chat as you listen together. You could also share an interactive whiteboard, such as Google Jamboard, for each character and have students add their thoughts as you listen together.
4. Pass out listening maps (slides 7-9) to pairs or trios of students and have them follow along with the map while you play the piece. Each person’s pointer finger should remain on the part of the piece that is being heard at that time. Model for students using a projector or document camera.
VIRTUAL OPTION: Screen share the listening map and have students track with their mouse or physically touch the screen as you model moving between leitmotifs.
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5. Create movements to represent each character. Each group is responsible for coming up with a movement that represents their character based on what they heard in the music and the notes from earlier in the lesson. These movements may or may not also be influenced by what they know about these characters in their Looney Tunes context.
Split the class into four groups (one group per character).
VIRTUAL OPTION: Split the class into four breakout rooms in Zoom or other video conferencing platform (one group per character).
6. Perform the song as a whole class with the student-chosen movements that correspond with each character’s leitmotif. During this listening, students will “come to life” with their movement when their leitmotif is heard in the piece. When their leitmotif is over, they are to stop their movement.
Students sit in their four different groups by character and perform their movement when their character’s music is heard. This should work the same way in a synchronous virtual space.
7. Perform the song again in heterogeneous groups—a group of four with one of each character, or a group of eight with two of each character. Repeat the process from Step 6, but this time ask students to pay attention to the other characters more closely—what movement did they choose? Why do you think they chose that movement? What did they hear in the music that made them choose to move that way?
Split the class into physical groups around the room.
VIRTUAL OPTION: Split the class into breakout rooms in Zoom or other video conferencing platform.
8. Debrief the characters and their leitmotifs as a class:
What movement did the Sylvester group choose?
Why do we think they chose that?
What words from our papers, chat, and whiteboards earlier helped them decide to do that?
Do we agree that movement makes sense?
Is there something else they/we could do to “match” the music?
9. Complete one final performance of the song. Students can choose to be one, two, three, or all four characters using the movements their peers created OR movements of their own that they think best reflect the elements in the music. 10. Student Questions – In each section of the music:
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What instruments do you hear?
Do the tempos change?
Are the melodies made of many low or high pitches?
Does the music feel calm or chaotic?
Which leitmotifs are similar and different?
What movements do YOU think best demonstrate the 4 characters based on the way their music sounds? What did the music tell them either about the personality of each character or what the character was doing in the piece?
NORTH CAROLINA SYMPHONY
CLASSROOM ACTIVITY #2: Telling a Story with Leitmotifs This activity is best done as an extension of Classroom Activity #1.
North Carolina Essential Standards in Music:
4.MR.1.1 - Illustrate perceptual skills by moving to, answering questions about, and describing aural examples of music of various styles and cultures.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards:
ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.2 Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text. ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.3 Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character’s thoughts, words, or actions). Objective: Students will analyze the composer’s organization of leitmotifs and create a story including the four characters from Classroom Activity #1. Materials: • North Carolina Symphony Education video • Accompanying slides • Student copies of listening map (slides 7-9) • Blank paper, writing utensil, art supplies for coloring (optional), markers, and physical space • VIRTUAL OPTIONS: Access to Google Jamboard, Draw and Tell, and/or Flipgrid Process: 1. Distribute listening maps to group
VIRTUAL OPTION: Listening map (slides 7-9) can be screen shared during synchronous learning, or shared for students to follow along on their own computers.
2. Have students listen to the piece again with their knowledge from the first activity. As they listen, they are to come up with a storyline. 3. Students can do this by looking at the musical structure of the piece—what is happening in the A section, B section, and coda—or they may describe what is happening when each leitmotif is playing, following each picture in the listening map. You may want to create a template for this based on the needs of your class or of individual students.
VIRTUAL OPTION: You can share this template virtually and have kids work independently or in groups through Google Suite.
4. Once the story template is completed and students have an outline for their story, they choose a medium through which to bring it to life:
Create a comic strip on paper with as many panels as they have plot points from their story template; physically write the story, focusing on transition words that help relay what changes in the story as the music changes; create speech bubbles for the characters in the story, holding them up as the song plays again.
VIRTUAL OPTION: Create a comic strip using sticky notes in Google Jamboard independently or collaboratively; use an app such as Draw and Tell or Flipgrid to have students speak the different parts of the story.
5. Allow students to present their interpretation of the story to their classmates with an opportunity for comments and questions, like a “talk-back” after a show. Students should be able to “justify” their work— why did you/what made you/what did that mean—with evidence from the music.
VIRTUAL OPTION: Students can pre-record and provide feedback virtually, or share/perform live for direct feedback.
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CLASSROOM ACTIVITY #3: Watch and Listen North Carolina Essential Standards in Music:
4.MR.1.1 - Illustrate perceptual skills by moving to, answering questions about, and describing aural examples of music of various styles and cultures.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards:
ELA-LITERACY.SL.4.4- Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience in an organized manner, using appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details to support main ideas or themes; speak clearly at an understandable pace. Objective: Students will answer questions in complete sentences about what they see and hear in the North Carolina Symphony’s performance of Dvořák’s Slavonic Dance, Op. 46, No. 8 Materials: • North Carolina Symphony Education video • Blank paper and writing utensil • VIRTUAL OPTION: Computer with internet access and editable document for students to answer questions electronically
Student Accountability Questions:
1. What emotion do YOU feel when the piece starts? Why do you think the music makes you feel that way?
Encourage students to use descriptive music vocabulary to answer the “why” question.
2. The conductor shakes someone’s hand before the music starts - what instrument does he play? 3. We get a close-up of one small percussion instrument with a high-pitched sound - what instrument is it? 4. After we see and hear the timpani play, which instrument family gets featured as the music becomes lighter, quieter, and higher pitched? 5. After the quieter, lighter section of music, the conductor makes a gesture to tell the orchestra that the music is going to go back to the fast and loud A section. What gesture or movement does the conductor make? 6. What instrument family sits farthest away from the conductor? Why do you think they sit farthest away? 7. How would you describe the tempo and dynamics at the very end of the piece?
STATE HEADQUARTERS 3700 GLENWOOD AVE, SUITE 130, RALEIGH, NC 27612 919.733.2750 ncsymphony.org North Carolina Symphony Student Handbook © 2020 by North Carolina Symphony Society, Inc. Reproduction of this book in its entirety is strictly prohibited.
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