Beethoven - Getting to know the composer and 3 of his most famous symphonies

 Moving from Novice to Expert in 4 weeks!

Year 3!

 

We talked about Beethoven the man and his personality, his huge achievements, found him on the Wall of Fame, found out what was happening around 250 years ago – put him into context. We talked about the Battle of Trafalgar and HMS Victory in Portsmouth etc – there’s a flip of things that were happening at this time

Children drew Beethoven in their books and brainstormed facts

We listened to Symphony Number 6 and concentrated our listening on Movement 4 and 5

I had pictures of each movement. This is a unique symphony as it’s one of the first pieces of Programme music (music to tell a story) and it has 5 movements (usually there are 4)

The symphony describes the countryside. What inspired Beethoven to write it etc

Movement 4 is a thunderstorm (animals and countryfolk running to hide etc – it’s loud – we acted it out)

Movement 5 is the calm after the storm (we acted this out, sun on our faces, dripping of water from the trees)

We drew the storm and the calm after the storm.

We listened to Symphony Number 5 – dot dot dot dash theme. V is 5 in Roman Numerals. V in Morse Code is dot dot dot dash (Morse Code was invented after this was written), Winston Churchill made the victory sign, this symphony is nicknamed the Victory Symphony

We watched an orchestra perform – recap knowledge of orchestral instruments from Autumn Term – play orchestras (children play imaginary instruments – we have buzz words for all instruments – ‘you don’t blow a baboon; you blow a bassoon,’ ‘pick your nose; piccolo (linked to Sponge Bob), violin family baby violin, big sister Viola, mummy cello (hug when played) daddy double bass)

Recap forte and piano – added new vocab ff fortissimo and pp pianissimo – stand when music is forte, crouch when piano, wave arms in the air when ff and stroke the floor when pp

Count how many times we hear the dot dot dot dash theme can be heard in first 1 minute

We played games to remember the theme

We learnt how to play the theme on keyboards and recapped knowledge – how to find the notes – to make this more relevant, we played the theme using Garageband – recap knowledge again how to use this software – always asking lots of questions

 

 

 

We compared Symphony 5 and 6

We listened to Symphony 9 and found out why this was the odd one out. The melody has been used for a hymn - this was used in Sister Act - anthem for European Union - nicknamed Ode to Joy - we sang

We learnt how to play the theme of Fur Elise - again, recap notes on keyboard

We were then ready for quizzing!!

 

 

We are now experts!