Study the Composers- Link Up (11/10/11)

Entering the Classical Period & Franz Joseph Haydn

 We started into the Classical Period this week. For the introduction, I simply read from A Young Scholar’s Guide to Composers. The kids really wanted to listen to something from the era but since there wasn’t a specific listening selection in the book…well, I made them be content with WCLV on the radio

However, as we moved along through the book we are now onto Joseph Haydn and there were plenty of listening selections to choose from. The one the kids really wanted to listen to though was not linked…I went searching

Le Poule Symphony is what they wanted to hear. Here is one video I found. Watch the performers heads… (just be careful if you choose other videos for this piece- some are not appropriate imho!)

We really enjoyed Haydn’s sense of humor His Farewell Symphony is great piece that shows a small bit of it. There was a youtube video linked in the book and it is the best that is probably out there but it’s not very clear. It would be really neat to see live. Or how about Surprise Symphony- Haydn said, “It will make all the women scream!” (A Young Scholar’s Guide to Composers, 2009, pg. 45)- it made me jump in surprise!

We will ‘finish up’ with Haydn on Friday by reading more about him in Harriette Brower’s book The World’s Great Men of Music found at Project Gutenberg. Also we will do more time lining and map placement (because I don’t think of it as ‘work’- we line up the composer with their country and color the country [if it isn’t already]). We will finish by making our composer info card and putting him in the Classical Period folder

How has your study been this week? Are you wondering how to just get started? Jump in! Check out ~a teaching heart~ for other ‘linkers’ to see what they have been doing.

PS: Thank you very much, Angie from Petra School and especially Barb from Harmony Fine Arts for the mini-unit on Prokofiev and Degas! I cannot wait to get started (I’ve been reading it already and searching for materials). I will add posts as we use it.