Can you answer these questions?

• Where was Vivaldi from?

• What instrument did he learn as a child?

• Why was he given the nickname "The Red Priest"?

• What is the name of Vivaldi's most popular work?

Listen to Vivaldi's music HERE

We have been becoming familiar with the string family through Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.  This week we are going to focus on the largest instruments in the string family, the cello and the double bass.

Camille Saint-Saëns was a French composer who lived many years after Vivaldi. He was very talented, composing his first work when he was only three years old!  He wrote Carnival of the Animals in 1886 as a joke, but it has become one of his most loved pieces of music. 

Although in Carnival of the Animals many animals are depicted, for now we will listen only to two parts or movements.  The first is called "The Swan," and features the cello.  The second uses the double bass for "The Elephant."

Up to now you have seen and worked with a variety of ideas in music.  See if you can explain to someone the following topics:

Here are two more tools essential for your rhythm toolbox:

The word percussion means "to beat".  When we look at the instruments in the percussion family in the orchestra, we can see how the percussionist beats or hits the instrument.

Watch the third movement of Toccata for Percussion written by Carlos Chávez. 

-> Can you name the percussion instruments as you listen to them?

Toccata for Percussion is written mostly for unpitched percussion, which are percussion instruments that do not play a pitch (note: do, re, mi, fa....) that affects the melody.  That is why when we listen to this piece, we think more about the rhythm than we do a melody.  The percussion instruments above are examples of unpitched percussion.

There are several special words that we use to describe how music sounds.  For instance, when we talk about tempo, we are talking about how fast or slow the music moves.  When we talk about pitch, we are talking about how high or low the notes are.  When we talk about dynamics, we are talking about how loud or soft the music is.  

Last lesson we used the words "rich", "bright", "soft", and "sharp" to describe how the different keyboard percussion instruments sound.  These words do not tell us about the tempo, pitch, or dynamics.  They tell us what is different about sounds even when the pitch and dynamics are the same.  These differences are called the timbre. 

• What words can you think of to describe the difference between how the organ sounds and how the harp sounds?

Now that you have learned about the percussion family and about timbre, you are ready to combine these into a different type of music.

When you want to tell a new story with music, you need to use new sounds.  Aaron Copland wrote music that sounded new and especially American.  

When Aaron Copland set out to make his original sound, he wanted people to feel how it was to live in New York.  He was also inspired by other places, including the open ranges of the United States West.   

Music can be written to help listeners feel like they are in a different place.  Long before Copland wrote his music, Ludwig van Beethoven had written a symphony that created the feeling of being in an open countryside.

Beethoven's 6th symphony, also called "pastoral" was divided up into five movements, each with a different name.

Now we will listen to the first movement of Beethoven's 6th symphony:

This year we have learned about several different composers.  We have also listened to different groups and families of instruments such as keyboard instruments and the strings.  

When pitch and rhythm are combined, together they make melody.

Cumulative review