Download Meaningful Performance - AffectiveLessonPlanning

Creating Affective
Lessons
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Emotional and intellectual connections to the
music are what made us all passionate about
music and are a reason we chose to teach
music. We want our students to experience
these musical “highs”.
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Creating connections to the music makes
rehearsals more meaningful to students.

Students perform better when they make
connections to the music.
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Affective responses are often emotional, but can
also take on the form of values, opinions,
desires, personal knowledge, or self awareness.
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Affective outcomes are often long-range goals
for our music students because it takes time to
develop appreciation, inspiration, or sensitivity.
Categories of Affective Outcomes:
The Composer’s Craft
The Meaningful Performance
Building Community
Personal Knowledge
From the Book “Shaping Sound Musicians”
– Patti O’Toole
The Composer’s Craft
Students analyze the composition in terms of its
affect and draw conclusions about its expressive
content based on the composers compositional
choices.
Meaningful Performance
Just as the composer makes choices that create
emotional content inherent in the piece itself,
performers enhance (or detract from) that
emotional content.
Building the Community
Sometimes a piece will lend itself to an outcome
that enhances the group identity, builds a stronger
sense of teamwork, promotes pride, creates an
atmosphere of trust, openness, or sensitivity to
others.
Building the Community
Examples:
Students will analyze the development section of
the symphony as an analogy of a group
discussion.
Students will explore issues of group identity,
nationalism, and patriotism, both healthy and
unhealthy.
Students will create new group goals based on the
previous concert performance.
Through musical improvisation, students will
explore the tension between process and product
in a performing group.
Students will write text and melody for a band
“Alma Mater” based on their feelings about and
desires for the band.
Personal Knowledge
By giving students a chance to explore their own
personal connections with the music they are
performing, they are able to explore aspects of
themselves that are practically never dealt with in
school but can influence their values and feelings
in a meaningful way.
Affective Outcomes for:
“A Prehistoric Suite” by Paul Jennings
Heart of this piece:
The heart of A Prehistoric Suite is its creative
use of musical devices to describe a particular
dinosaur or pair of dinosaurs and spark the
imagination of the listener.
Personal Knowledge
Students will identify their new learning and will
express an informed opinion about the music
based on this new knowledge.
Strategies:
What have you learned about music from this piece that you
didn’t know before we began studying it?
 Discuss program music versus concrete music. Play excerpts
of examples of each. Do you prefer music that is
programmatic or concrete (music with no non-musical
influence)? Why?
 If you were composing this piece how what musical devices
would you use that Paul Jennings uses? How would you
portray each dinosaur differently in your composition? Why?
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Assessment
Write a short composition for your instrument that
describes a dinosaur of your choice. Perform the
composition for the class and be prepared to
answer questions about musical choices you made
to describe your dinosaur.
Affective Outcomes for “Portrait of a Clown” by
Frank Ticheli
Heart of this piece:
The heart of Portrait of a Clown is not a single
element, but the idea of contrast and surprise.
Ticheli does this with rhythm, texture and
timbre, phrasing, compositional devices and the
use of the lydian scale.
Composer’s Craft
Students will analyze the piece, referring to form
and phrasing, and describe how the composer
provides unity and variety.
Strategies:
 Discuss contrast - what is it? - where do we find it
outside of class? Where do we see it in our music?

How does the composer use contrast to reflect the
musical title? What makes this piece a portrait? Why did
composer use that title? What does the title say about
the music.
Meaningful Performance
Students will describe how expectation and surprise in
music arouse our emotion.
The form of this piece ABA and the melody/harmony
provide 2 distinct musical emotions.
Strategies:
 Tell a story from your own personal experience, about a
surprise in your life. Was it joyful or sad? both? What is
Portrait of a Clown reminds you of that surprise?

Tell a story from your imagination about a surprise.
Think of this story as a movie. What music will you use
to help tell your story? Would Portrait of a Clown work?
why or why not?
Assessment
Affective assessment can be handled in several
ways. Portfolios of work, self-evaluation, journaling
and rubrics are some of the tools you can use.
Excerpted from Portrait of a Clown Teaching Plan
–
Laura Sinberg, Wisconsin CMP Team Member
October by Eric Whitacre
The Heart:
The heart of October is the simple, Romantic
melodies enriched by the intentional, intricate
weaving of timbral colors and arched phrases
uncovering the sentimental soul of the season
ultimately experienced through the performance.
Composer’s Craft
Students will identify, analyze and interpret the differing
compositional techniques used by the composer to
create his intention for the performance.
Strategies:
 Explore and develop a purpose for using
– One measure phrasing
– Differing meters
– “Falling” scales
– Suspensions
– Solo, chamber, and full ensemble sections
– Staggered entrances/canon
– Trills
– Harmonies
– Timbral choices
Meaningful Performance
Students will explore the nuances of Romantic
sentiment to embody the ebb and flow within the
performance.
Strategies:
Discover and relate lyrical literary elements from Robert
Frost’s poem, October, and William Cullen Bryant’s poem,
October, to the lyrically arched phrasing in Whitacre’s October
 Relate the differing tempi, pauses, and emphasis performed
in the lyrical reading of poetry to the performance of phrasing
within the composition
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Building Community
Students will compare and contrast each
individual’s role in the differing settings we
encounter in life with the differing textures in the
composition.
Strategies:

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Develop everyday life scenarios reminiscent of differing sections in
the work
– Soloist with minimal accompaniment
– Chamber wind sections
– Full ensemble settings
Within the developed scenarios, determine and understand the
individuals who should be more prominent and those who
accompany the task and/or may step into more prominence for a
short time then return
Personal Knowledge
Students will express personal experiences of
quiet, sentimental beauty revealing their own
relationships with the composition.
Strategies:
Analyze and discuss musical elements within October
that would indicate quiet, sentimental beauty
 Create individual or small group projects reflective of
quiet, sentimental beauty
 Develop periodic journal entries
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Affective Outcomes for “St. James Infirmary” arr.
Tom Davis
Heart of the Piece:
This arrangement of St. James Infirmary has a
wonderful mixture of textures that take the
performer on a musical journey back to New
Orleans at the turn of the century.
The Composer’s Craft
Students will analyze and categorize the compositional
devices that create the various “atmospheres” in St. James
Infirmary. The students will then evaluate their expressive
impact in the piece.
For Example:
Opening theme in trombones – “testifying”
Triplet based drumming with mallets – “African Drumming”
Aleatoric sounds in the piano and guitar – “Other worldly”,
“purgatory”
Plunger muted trumpet solo – “Crying”, very vocal in
Nature.
Call and response in the ensemble sections – “Prayer
Meeting”, “Wake”
The Meaningful Performance
Students will analyze expressive elements of the
jazz language (glissando, scoop, growl, use of
mutes, etc.) and evaluate whether these elements
make the composition more expressive and
communicative.
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Listen to numerous recordings of St. James Infirmary
and discuss what expressive elements are used and why.
Building the Community
Students will analyze jazz improvisation as an
analogy for a group discussion.
Define what elements are needed for a successful group
discussion. (Lunch Room, Committee Meeting, etc.)
 Connect these elements to aspects of a jazz
performance.
 Listen to various jazz performances and determine how
successfully the performance depicts a group discussion.
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Personal Knowledge:
Students will relate their own experiences of loss
or grief to St. James Infirmary.
The text/story of the piece is the story of loss and
death.
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Read, analyze, and discuss the lyrics for the folk song,
St. James Infirmary.
Journal
The CMP Model
Music Selection
Analysis
Outcomes
Strategies
Assessment