Comprehensive Musicianship Lesson

Ben Maynard
Rehearsal: 12-7-17

National Standards

Common Anchor #5: Evaluate and refine personal ensemble performances,

individually or in collaboration with others.
Common Anchor #6: Perform expressively, with appropriate interpretation and
technical accuracy, and in a manner appropriate to the audience and context.

Objectives

Students will understand the aesthetic premise that Old Home Days was composed and
will make it evident by playing the music with great style and character.
Students will learn about Charles Ives and various compositional techniques that is used
in his music.
Students will improve pitch and rhythmic accuracy, style, and understand of form from
the beginning of movement 5 until measure marker 35.

Materials

Score for Old Home Days: London Bridge has Fallen Down!
Baton
Trumpet for demonstration
Charles Ives Documentary
Notecards
Television screen

Comprehensive Musicianship (10 minutes)

Pass out a notecard to each student and have them write down (1-2 sentences) one
memory that has stuck with them since childhood.
Make two circles and share the memory with each other.
Students will close their eyes at their seat and think of one word to describe how this
memory makes them feel.
Ask the class what different ways that people can express this kind of nostalgia.
Writing books
painting/drawing
Sharing stories with people
Look at old pictures
Writing music
Introduce that we will be learning about Charles Ives. Turn your note card over and write
down some things from the documentary that Ives did when he was little.
Show the documentary from 1:40-2-47. (Explain who George Ives was).
 Explain that Ives made music with his family when he was a childhood and that we will
be playing the fifth movement a suite of music that was arranged using tunes that he
loved when he was a child.

Warm-up (15 minutes)

Breathing Exercises
Breathing from the stomach
Direction of air
Fogging up windows
Cooling off soup (clarinets)
Apply breathing to concert F
Split the class up, having one have drone a concert F while the other half plays the F
major scale in whole notes in the legato style.
Repeat and switch the players roles.
Keep these same groups. Have one play up and down the F scale in quarter notes.
Have the other group play at the same time, only in Eb major.
Explain that Ives often used polytonality in his compositions.
Students will listen and echo the instructor model London Bridge is Falling Down in
solfege.
Students will play London Bridge is Falling Down on their instruments.
Explain that Ives also liked to use American tunes that are culturally important.

Tune: A for woodwinds and Bb for brass.

Old Home Days: Movement 5 London Bridge is Fallen Down! (20 minutes)
Read straight through the beginning of the movement to measure marker 31.
Isolate the melody at 30.
Emphasize articulation and style
Isolate the accompaniment part.
Use Ho-Ho-Ho to define how short the quarter notes should be.
Be sure that clarinets bring the accented notes slightly out of context.
Put all of this work back into context by reading straight through the beginning to
measure marker 31.
Read straight through measure marker 31-35. Repeat the previous rehearsal strategies
to rehearse and clean up these measures.

Assessment
Formative assessments will be completed throughout the rehearsal through active
listening to tone quality, rhythm accuracy, pitch accuracy, appropriate style, and tuning.
Exit ticket: Ask students write down the two compositional elements of Ivess music that
we have discussed in this lesson. Have them turn it in with their names on it.

Future Lessons
 During future lessons, we will finish rehearsing the rest of this movement to enable us to
perform it alongside the rest of the piece.
Students will be required to complete a brief research assignment to find various
additional pieces that were written in the 20th century and use similar elements to Old
Home Days.
We will discuss the different contexts of Charles Ivess that each of these movements
were written.
We will come up with and discuss more folk tunes that might appear in a Charles
Ives piece.
We will continue to include several elements such as polytonality and various rhythm
exercises in warm up to get students accustomed to these elements of 20th century
music.