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Lesson Plan- for choir/music appreciation/music in humanities

Topic-How does current music relate to classical/romantic music?

Overview

In addition to teaching curriculum, the job of a teacher is to educate in different ways. So, the class will switch gears and talk about how current music relates to classical and romantic works. Current music will be played and analyzied on a surface level, then compared to other music, such as classical.

Objective

~Spark student interest in classical music by relating it to current music.

~Discuss a few basics about classical music, and refer to some specific works that they may take an interest in.

~relate the two, and assign a project related to listening to music

Activity/Lesson (45 min. class)

5 min. Introduction- Changing the pace today. We are going to take some songs that are fairly popular, and compare them to some well known classical works that you students may not have heard before.

10 min. Play a medley of popular music, that utilizes some classical sounds in it, such as violin, flute, etc, and/ or find music with classical themes that may have been sampled. Popular music may change, but some current music as of 1999 that may be usable would be:

~Bittersweet Symphony by the Verve Pipe uses violins and cellos throughout

~Les Nubians- Princess Nubians any track on this CD, uses cello, violin, flute

~Chubbawumba- RTubthumperS (I Get Knocked Down) samples various classical works throughout

Ask students to take notes on what they hear as they listen

10 min. Play a medley of classical music that will compliment and show where some of these melodies and instrumentation came from.

10 min. Have a discussion with the students of what they heard, and how it relates. Offer some points about classical music and a quick run down of musical historical facts related to this, and about how artists have always lived on the edge, and tried to push the envelope: Use Paganini as an example.

10 min. Assign project, due in one week and give them some time to answer some questions about the project and get a few ideas from each other.

Come up with some areas of assessment together in class that people will be graded on. Some examples would be: good info on composer and instruement? creativity in presentation? etc.

Assessment

Project:

Have them do a little research on a particular composer and the instrument the composer wrote the most music for. Their research must use several sources, only one of which can be from the internet. Their research cannot be a traditional paper, but must somehow display the info they have researched and contain a type of bibliography. Examples would be a poster project with info about the composer and their instrument, or an audio tape radio station interview, or a mock television story interview, or even a skit.

The second part of the project would be to play some current music, with the instrument of the composer being used in the current music. (note: instruments can be the human voice, and performers can be vocalists, but some attention to style would need to be done)If possible, it would be great to relate how the two artists may be related other than the instrument. Was the new artist influenced by this particular classical composer?

Projects will be presented in class one week from today.

Continue to second part of lesson plan and presentations