Music and art activities

1. Discuss with the students about the history of musical notation. Music has existed since the dawn of civilization. Instruments dating back over 165,000 years have been found which show different forms of pitch and changes to adapt tone colour and sounds. These are very interesting to examine.

Initially music was passed along by oral tradition. Not long after, people became aware of the need to develop a way to write down sounds to help music survive and be communicated. This became particularly clear if the original musician forgot the melody or was no longer around to teach it.

2. Explain that notation is any system created to visually represent sounds. People from all over the globe and from different time periods have created different systems of notation. The earliest example of notation that archeologists have found comes from 1400 BC in what is now Northern Syria. Other examples have been found in Ancient Greek musical notation from approximately the 2nd century BC.

3. The modern notation system known as ‘traditional’ notation has its origins in the European church music of the 9th and 10th centuries. Monks chanted by reading words with little symbols written above them. The symbols reminded the monks that the melody went up or down in pitch. They were however just reminders and the monks were taught each chant by listening to others.

4. Guido d’Arrezo then invented a more detailed form of notation and solfege (syllables to represent notes) in the early 1000s AD that showed precise pitches on a staff of four lines; the shapes of the notes indicated their duration.

This system continued to evolve into what is now our standard musical notation which has five lines there are words and symbols to specify pitch, dynamics, articulation and tempo.

5. Following is a score (sheet music that shows all of the instruments playing) of one page of a violin concerto by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This is the second movement of Mozart’s ‘Violin Concerto No.5 in A major’. Look at all the directions the composer writes down for the musicians. You can hear the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra or Richard Tognetti and The ACO play the music on this page in this Spotify recording.

6. Composers continue to imagine new sounds and create unique forms of notation. Graphic notation is a way of composing that uses primarily pictures and visual images. This graphic score is by composer John Cage of his work ‘Water Walk’. Examine the score with the students and listen to the music. How are they related?

7. In each graphic notation score the composer creates a set of rules that explain what the symbols mean, and how they translate into sound. Explore these examples to investigate common themes. The visual arts within is also worthy of detailed discussion.

8. This is a graphic composition created by Alex Chorley, a then 12-year old student from Sydney. Explore and play his key and score. You may need to change the key to suit the instruments you have available. The pitch rises as you move from the centre of the circle to the outside. Time passes in a circle, like a clock.

Art activity

1. Create a key that the students will use to compose their pieces. In this lesson they are only creating the key. They will compose the piece itself in the next lesson.

2. Materials needed include: paper of any size, pens or pencils, colored pencils, markers or crayons, or paint.

3. Below are parameters and choices that students can make when creating their key or legend. This key should only be a draft work in progress because the students will need to add, subtract, and change things as they start to compose their pieces.

4. Discuss with the student ways to show how time will pass in the composition and how it will be read. For example will it move from left to right, right to left, up and down, in a circle (clockwise or anticlockwise) or is it random? Will arrows show the order of events? How will pitch (high and low) be shown?

5. After discussing these important components of a graphic score, ask the students to create pictures, symbols or a visual method for showing the following aspects of their scores:

   • the duration, rhythm and beat of notes

   • the dynamics or volume of notes (pianissimo through to fortissimo)

   • the emotions (for example a smiley face can signify the composer wants happy music, or red scribble can signify an angry section)

   • possible sound effects (for example on a stringed instrument using pizzicato, ponticello, tremolo, harmonics, mute or different ways of playing a percussion instrument other than the traditional method)

   • articulation or texture (short, sharp, smooth, connected, bouncy and so on)

   • instrumental sounds imitating nature (such as drawing rain for example, or wind, or a picture of a bird if they want birdcalls and so on)

   • shapes such as specifying that a diagonal line down from right to left indicates the pitch sliding from high to low like a sigh.

   • encourage the students to create rules that can be combined. For instance, if the pitch was to be high then a star at the top of the page may symbolise this and at the bottom of the page would mean low in pitch. Also, for example if something is orange, it could mean loud, if it is blue it means soft.

   • the following composition would therefore be two high notes played softly then two low notes played loudly and finishing with one low note played softly: