As we listen to musical selections in this unit, certain objectives are crucial for achieving our goals. Some objectives are to be long range, others short range. A short range objective with music will be for the students to be able to explore their own responses to sound as they listen to the music as a regular part of the class structure. Various themes and sounds of different music will be introduced for each lesson. The goal is to translate sound into emotion and then into art. In addition, the students will familiarize themselves with a large variety of sounds. Their sensibility to music will hopefully improve.
Some short range music objectives will be:
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• Developing the students' sense of rhythm and beat.
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• Developing a realization that we are all affected differently by music.
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• Developing the ability to talk openly about music and emotion.
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• Developing knowledge of musical instruments and how we respond to them.
Some long range music objectives will be:
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• Developing an awareness that certain music evokes certain colors and moods.
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• Developing intuitive responses to music.
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• Developing knowledge of color and how we respond to it.
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• Developing an emotional relationship with various music selections.
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• Developing a knowledge of the history of specific music and art works.
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• Developing knowledge of resemblances that music has to twentieth century art.
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• Developing the ability to analyze music using the object analysis method.
After the students familiarize themselves with these objectives, another general objective includes the appreciation and understanding of visual art. This might take the greatest amount of time to achieve. Looking at abstract art of the twentieth century, there are certain objectives there that are crucial for achieving our goals. We again have short range objectives as well as long range objectives.
Some short range visual art objectives will be:
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Developing immediate responses describing the artwork (color, shape, line).
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Developing the ability to talk openly about art and emotion.
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Developing the realization that we have different reactions to visual art.
Some long range visual art objectives will be:
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Developing the ability to make deductions about art.
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Developing the ability to make speculations about art.
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Developing an awareness that certain artwork evokes certain colors and moods.
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Developing the ability to imagine and understand what the artist is feeling.
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Developing the ability to analyze art through the object analysis method.
In this unit my students will:
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collectively use specific works of art with specific pieces of music to study their relationship to each other.
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listen to selected music pieces and discuss personal emotional relations.
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receive background information on the artist related to that specific artwork.
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discuss what the artists' emotions might be as they view the artwork.
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look at the artwork and talk about what they see in it.
What can the students say about the artist? They will develop these abilities through the aforementioned methods of description, deduction, and speculation.
For the description portion, the students will describe the artwork and they will listen to the related music and describe it. As music is different, they will describe the composition, what kind of piece it is (full orchestra, string orchestra, chamber group, jazz ensemble, etc.) and its genre. They will notice the instruments in the pieces and the context in which they are played (i.e. How many solo lines and how many group solo lines? Who are playing the melodies high pitched or low pitched instruments?)
Using deduction, the students will make deductions based on the object as they perceive it physically and functionally. With the music, they will make deductions based on the object as they perceive it aurally and functionally. Deduction involves three steps: sensory engagement, intellectual engagement, and emotional response.
Sensory engagement allows the viewer and listener to imagine what he/she would see, hear, smell, taste, and feel in the artwork. (Sensory engagement is not possible for music. As we are not visually looking at music, it makes it impossible to engage our senses into what we are not seeing.)
Intellectual engagement allows us to pose and answer questions such as:
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• What is the music telling you?
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• Is the pitch high or low?
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• Is it fast or slow?
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• What is the timbre or mood of the instruments?
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• Are the instruments playing alone or together?
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• What colors do you hear?
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• What lines do you see? Are they horizontal (underlying beat, tempo)? Vertical (stresses on the first beat of each measure)? Diagonal? i.e. instrumental lines Do they go up in volume without coming down or vice versa?
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• Do the instruments play a part of the melody only to pass it off to another instrument?
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• What kind of spacing is there between instruments?
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• How can we translate this into what the artwork we see?
The third step asks the viewers and listeners for their emotional response. As this is important in art, it is especially important when listening to music. It is not uncommon to realize that these responses will be widely shared by all students participating. A particular artwork or piece of music may trigger joy, fright, awe, perturbation, revulsion, indifference, curiosity, or other responses that can be quite subtly distinguished. They point to specific insights. We will see how the students relate separately to the paintings and the music.
The final step is speculation. The students attempt to speculate about the culture that produced the artwork and the music. Using the information developing from the prior two methods, the first step is to form hypotheses. Summing up what has been learned, students develop theories explaining the various effects observed and felt. With respect to the theories they come up with, I believe that quite different questions from classmates might arise at this point. The students will then back up their theories to answer these questions. The answers will reflect the artist's articulation of beliefs. At this point, the students will have discovered unique viewpoints of the materials being studied and will have a heightened awareness of not only artwork, but music as well.
