Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756-1791

We have begun our study of the classical period with Wolfgang Mozart. The classical music period roughly extended from 1750 – 1820 “has been broadened to subsume the entire period between the more heavily-ornate Baroque and the more emotionally-charged Romantic eras; while admittedly simplistic, the term “classical” does suggest the emphasis for orderly, balanced, and natural musical discourse that marks this period. It is not unrelated that these years correspond to the Enlightenment and the rise of democracy, to which the straightforward and often “popular” approach to musical expression formed a logical counterpart.”

In taking a look at Mozart this week, we learned about Rondos.

Rondos: An instrumental composition in which the main theme is alternated with contrasting themes.

If the main theme is labeled A, and the other sections are labeled B, C, and D, the form of a rondo would be A-B-A-C-A-D-A.

We also love Classical Kids' Mozart's Magic Fantasy: A Journey Through 'The Magic Flute' and Mozart's Magnificent Voyage. Both CDs weave facts about his life with music and a story.

Other resources include:

Mozart, The Wonder Boy, Opal Wheeler and companion CD

Classics for Kids

The Story of Mozart

Free Lapbook

Composer Study: Johann Sebastian Bach 1685-1750

I thought I would peak your interest in our Bach study by this piece. We have been listening to many of his pieces including some of the Brandenburg Concertos.
We have also been listening to The Story of Bach.
I highly recommend Harmony Fine Arts's Grade 2 Medieval and Gothic Reniassance and Medieval and Renaissance Art and Music Middle School Level. We do a combination of the two, so all of my students can be working on the same composer. She provides links, coloring and notebooking pages. We also use a timeline. She also shares a free Bach Compser Study.

We also love Mr. Bach Comes To Call which includes his music and some infomation about his life in the context of a story.
Other wonderful books and resource we plan to use are:
Sebastian Bach, The Boy from Thuringia, Opal Wheeler
Sebastian Bach and Mozart Companion CD Audio MP3 CD
Lapbook: A Hands-On Activity to Accompany: Sebastian Bach, the Boy from Thuringia and Mozart, The Wonder Boy
Lapbook piece
Free Notebooking pages at Practical Pages
Notebooking Pages at That Resource Site

Bach's Goldberg Variations
Making Music Fun: Hey Kids, Meet Johann Sebastian Bach
Classics for Kids

Composer Study: Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)

"About six works by some great composer are chosen for study each term. These compositions are played or sung to the children constantly and studied carefully. The children are taught something about the form, harmonic structure, thematic development of the composition and some information is given about the life of the composer."

-Art and Literature in the Parents' Union School

by Marjorie F. Ransom. (Ex-student House of education)Volume 34, 1923, pgs. 75-84

page from Harmony Fine Arts, Grade 2 Medieval Goth and Renaissance

This week when we made our spring pictures, we listened to Vivaldi's spring portion of The Four Seasons. Today we learned a little about the biography of the Red Priest and his all-girl orchestra.

When I studied this composer with Katie she was able to play a few of his pieces on the piano, but the boys are not at that level at piano.
Vivaldi's Four Seasons concertos are examples of the concerto grosso. The concerto grosso, is a form of baroque music in which the musical material is passed between a small group of soloists (the concertino) and full orchestra (the ripieno).


We will be following a combination of the lessons in Harmony Fine Arts Grade 2 and Harmony Fine Arts Medieval and Renaissance Art and Music Middle School Level. I highly reccommend these lesson plans, which include links to the music, coloring pages, notebooking pages and some craft projects such as making you own straw oboe. In the next few weeks we will be listening to:
Gloria
Oboe Concertos
and Mandolin Concertos
We also love Classical Kids' Vivaldi's Ring of Mystery a CD which not only has incorporated his music into some facts about his life, but also weaves in an interesting story. We love listening to it in the car.

Composer Study: Palestrina {1525-1594} (BTW-This is my 1000th post!)

Giovannai Palestrina was an Italian composer who composed music mainly for the church. His compositions were meant for the human voice. We talked about how the vocal cords make sound and how different sounds are made from different parts of the mouth. We made a "t" sound and then a "d" sound and noticed what parts of the mouth produced the sounds. Then we listened to Palestrina's music.

Composer Study: Guillaume de Machaunt {1300-1377}

The earliest music in the Middle Ages was plainsong -a chanting of a single line of melody, which took the rhythm from the words. Gradually more parts were added, simply doubling the original plainsong melody at intervals of a fourth, fifth or an octave. This is called polyphony. A canon is anothe example of early polyphony. You have probably heard it called in the round. To illustrate this, you could have your students sing "Row, row, row your Boat," with each student starting at a different time. The polyphonic music of Machaut, who worked for King John of Bohemia, reflects the Gothic style, which is known for being highly ornamental, as compared to the plainsong of before.

 Homegrown Learners has a great post with notebooking page on Medieval Music.

Watercolor Lessons and Mozart Composer Study

Katie started her watercolor lessons with her brothers today. She is getting the lessons from Amanda at Hearts and Trees . These are simple lessons that only take a few minutes but they help teach better control of the paints & paintbrush. In the first part of the lesson, she taught them how to make a good clean stripe of color by loading the brush with watercolor paint before applying it to the paper. She asked them to make stripe after stripe, overlapping to make a rectangle. Then she showed them how to make a graded wash by dipping the brush in water between each stripe, making the paint fade with each application.

Then I began our composer study with Amadeus Mozart. They learned about his childhood by listening to 15 minutes of The Story of Mozart in Words and Music, which is a great CD which blends a narration of Mozart's life story with selections of his music. They were allowed to draw as they wished as it was playing and I asked a sentence narration from them on what they had learned after the selections was finished.