Thursday, January 27, 2011

Need Help!

Before you get worried we are all just fine in our house! All is well and by some miracle we are all healthy.

I need blog lands help though. I want to teach my harp students this year about classical composers. Not just famous harpists but really open their eyes to a bit of the amazing classical world. I want to somehow help them be well rounded musicians not just well rounded harpists (if there is such a thing!)

So I am trying to come up with a list of AMAZING classical composers that we can learn about. I am thinking one a month (at group lessons) then possibly having a little quiz the next month or something like that.

There are so many composers that I love and want to share with them but the ages of my students range from 3-18. I want to somehow keep it light and memorable. Does anyone have suggestions?

I know the greats like Beethoven, Mozart and Bach but what others do you like?

4 comments:

Circe said...

Bartok! For sure! You can talk about folk music and use his Romanian Folk Dances, which are short. Maybe tie him in with Kodaly, because I'm sure you could find some short folk dances arranged for harp from Kodaly. There are so many simple rhythms you could go with, and maybe even throw Copland in there with Appalachian Spring - "It's a Gift to be Simple." so...folk music across cultures. Sounds fun! I want to be one of your students!

sws said...

Does Gershwin count? What about "papa Haydn?" It seems like there is a lot of Haydn harp music. And I love Chopin and Shumann...too piano?

Louise said...

I love Strauss and Chopin!

Emily said...

Debussy, Dvorak, Brahms. Could you make CD's with little samples and see if they can recognize the difference in styles? Now it's sounding a bit like my college days... but I loved that kind of listening/comparing.