Istituto Comprensivo Castelfidardo

1. Istituto Comprensivo Castelfidardo Dalla Chiesa Primary School Teaching and learning through music

3. DETAILS • Grade four • Number of pupils : 24 • Age range : ten • Time : two lessons of sixty minutes • Material : CD-rom or audio cassette, cassette recorder, exercise book, white paper and crayons

4. AIMS • To stimulate pupils’ imagination • To understand the language of music • To draw to music

5. Procedure • The music that has been chosen for the project is “Pictures at an exhibition” by Modest Mussorgski, a Russian composer. • This music was created by M.M. while he was thinking about an exhibition by his friend Viktor Hartman: there are a lot of different pieces and each represents a painting.

6. There is “ the old castle” which is very sad “ the chicks ballet” : happy and light;

7. “tuileries”, where the composer describes children’s games; “catacombae, sepulchrum romanum”,slow and heavy… and others.

8. Feelings are so well described, so clear in this music that the teacher doesn’t have to say anything

9. Pupils hear one “painting” at a time (in this moment silence is very important) At the end of each piece of music the pupils write down their emotions, feelings and images created by the music in their inner eye.

10. In the first lesson pupils can hear 4 or 5 pieces more than once if necessary In the second lesson they tell their class about what they have written. Of course, there will be a lot of different feelings and images, but it is very unlikely that one child can write “happiness” and another one “ sadness”

11. Then they can draw something which represents their feelings Only at the end of all the work the teacher will tell them the composer’s aim and will discuss it. Probably the “ exhibition” will be very different from that by V. Artmann, but presumably the feelings will be the same