Music and art activities

1. Begin by discussing how music and visual arts have a lot in common. Ask the students to provide their own thoughts on how this is possible. Prompt them with the musical concepts of duration, pitch, dynamics, tone colour, structure and texture. Are the students able to identify correlations?

This begins to prepare students for their upcoming task of composing a piece of music. The object of this lesson is for students to become aware of the choices that they can make when they are composing music or creating an artwork.

2. Explain to the students that a composer chooses the tempo, or how fast or slow they want the music to be. This is a part of the musical concept of duration. Explore some movement activities such as moving around the room at a fast or slow tempo and discussing environmental objects such as animals or vehicles that move slow or fast.

3. Duration means the length of time something continues. What is the duration of your ability to stay under water without coming up for air? Notes can be short and quick or last a long time. How does changing the duration of the note, change its feeling?

4. Listen to the following two examples of music: one has a fast tempo; the other has a slow tempo. Keep the beat using body percussion or movement. Describe the tempo of each piece. How does the tempo affect the mood of the music? A fast tempo in music might produce more excitement, energy, nervousness, virtuosity, while a slow tempo might evoke thoughtfulness, calmness, sometimes sadness or peacefulness and so on:

   • Fast tempo: listen to ‘Violin Concerto’ (3^rd Movement) by Samuel Barber or on Spotify.

   • Slow tempo: ‘Orchestral Suite in D Major, BWV 1068’ (Second Movement: ‘Air’) by Johann Sebastian Bach. This footage displays the duration of notes visually. The coloured bars are different lengths depending on how long the note is held. The music is the ‘Air for strings’.

5. In artworks, three artists evoke tempo (or in art usually described as rhythm or movement) clearly: Monet, Boccioni and Seurat. Explore all three artists and allow the students to describe and critique in their own words.

   • Claude Monet has often been described as evoking a slow mood often because his artworks seem calming.

   • Umberto Boccioni’s artworks have commonly been described as appearing to be fast moving. Explore his work ‘The Car and Hunting Fox’ and discuss the movement within the work that gives this impression.

   • Georges Seurat’s ‘The Circus’ has two clear tempos –everything in the middle is in motion, but the audience around is frozen in stillness.

6. Articulation describes how notes or images connect to each other. In string instruments, the articulation is changed by how the bow is used. The bow can be bounced on the string, it can hit the string sharply, it can be smooth and connected, or it can be eliminated completely. Pizzicato is the word for when the string is plucked with a finger. That changes the articulation a lot.

Articulation can also be described as texture, or the way something feels to touch.

When the bow bounces and the notes are short, they sound like a rubber ball bouncing up and down. Smooth bowing can sound like a piece of soft silk. Sound can also be rough like sandpaper, sharp like a tack, or fluffy like a cloud. Explore other similes to connect, texture and literacy.

7. Watch The Australian Chamber Orchestra (The ACO) play this movement of ‘String Quartet No.1’ by Edvard Grieg. Look at their bows and listen for the articulation and the texture. How are they using their bows? What textures do you hear?

8. Beethoven’s ‘Symphony No. 5’ first movement starts with a rough, bouncy, and sharp texture but around 00:40 the sound changes to become smooth and fluid although not for long (01:15) or listen on Spotify.

9. The beginning of Richard Wagner’s ‘Siegfried Idyll’ is often described as sounding silky and velvety. Watch the YouTube footage or listen on Spotify.

10. Many artworks have actual or implied texture within them. Explore the different surfaces in the following paintings. How would you describe them? How would they feel to touch? How might they sound? How did the artist create the effect of the different textures?

    • George Stubbs ‘Brown and White Norfolk or Water Spaniel’ discussed the implied texture of the dog’s coat. Student may wish to share their own description of their own pet’s fur’s texture.

    • Johannes Vermeer ‘The Music Lesson’. In this artwork, it is important to notice the differences between the textures of the rug, the floor, the walls, the windows, the ceilings, the vase, and the chair.

    • Rembrandt van Rijn ‘Elephant’. In this artwork, Rembrandt uses charcoal and paper to portray in such fine detail the skin of the elephant.

11. Dynamics is the musical term for changes in volume. Dynamics provides contrast, variety and interest to a composition. Composers write in the music how loud or soft the musicians should play. Usually these words are in Italian. For instance, if the composer writes ‘piano’ (or just the letter p), this means to play quietly. If the composer writes ‘forte’ (or the letter f), this means to play loudly.

12. Listen to these musical examples and discuss the impact the dynamics have on the music. What would the piece sound like without them?

    • This symphony by Joseph Haydn is nicknamed the ‘Surprise Symphony in G major, Op.94’, second movement (or listen on Spotify). How does Haydn use dynamics to make contrasts and create his surprise?

    • The end of Piotr Tchaikovsky’s ‘1812 Overture’ is fortississimo (very, very, very loud) (or listen on Spotify).

    • ‘Also sprach zarathustra’ is a very famous piece by Richard Strauss. Listen to the beginning which contains a huge crescendo meaning the orchestra starts soft and then gets louder incrementally. Discuss what the effect would be if Strauss had written a diminuendo (to get softer) instead?

13. Describing the dynamics in artwork is much more difficult. It involves the interpretation of the audience exploring the scene within the artwork and making a judgement about the perception if the mood and hence the volume or dynamic level of the scene. This may be changed through the amount of space used or negative space (emptiness), colour, movement and other implied aspects of artwork. Discuss the students’ different interpretation if the dynamics within these artworks. Do they think the dynamics would be loud, soft, gradually changing or contrasting and why?

    • John Trumbull’s ‘The Declaration of Independence’. Although there are a lot of people in the room it is hard to determine whether there is any talk or a lot occurring.

    • Mark Rothko’s ‘No.5/No.22’ features intense colours but is very simple. Its vibrancy effects the viewer. Rothko wanted audiences to look at this work and feel a full spectrum of emotion through the colour palette.

    • Jillian Ashton’s ‘The Wave’ is particularly thought-provoking with the calmness of the water contrasted with a wave. Dynamic levels could contrast dramatically.

Music and art thunderstorm activity

1. Ask the students to think about a violent thunderstorm that abates and ends in a rainbow. As a class, make a list of all of the sounds one might hear in this scene. Note which sounds might be loud, quiet, scary, calm or soothing; which sounds might be fast or slow? For example in a thunderstorm, does the rain hit the ground quickly or slowly? Also think about the duration of the sounds – does the thunder rumble for a long time, is the flash of lightning sudden and quick?

2. Create a soundscape using instruments, body percussion or vocal sounds in small groups. Perform these to the rest of the class explaining the choices made. Alternatively, as a class create a thunderstorm composition through a round sound game that commences with one student and gradually layers each student in. This round game is a musical activity for promoting teamwork through listening and promoting awareness and development of all the musical concepts.

3. Create an artwork to match your soundscape of a thunderstorm. Consider what dynamics, texture, articulation, duration and tempo to use.

4. Ask the students to draw, colour or paint the scene. Use the discussion session to guide them to create a visual vocabulary for showing the volume, articulation, and duration of the sounds through contrasts between light and dark, and experiment with colour and texture.

5. Ask the students to explain their choices in words. For example, “the rain started slowly and got faster and heavier and then got slower and ended, so I drew tiny little dots at first, spaced out, then I made them bigger and put them all closer to together and then I made them little again and spaced them out further and further apart until they stopped.”