Music

“Music has a tremendous value as an academic discipline. It contributes to the understanding of other subjects. In school there’s a tremendous difference between learning and doing. With music, you do both.”

Joan Schmidt, Board Member, National School Boards Association

Through music education, students become fluent in the language of music as artistic, intellectual, and cultural expression. Performing, creating, and responding to music provide means for development and growth. Learning to read and notate music opens for students the limitless body of musical styles, forms, and repertoire, and allows them to see what they hear and hear what they see. Fluency in music brings understanding of contemporary and historical cultures, as well as self-knowledge. Music includes forms such as folk, popular, band and orchestral music, gospel music and oratorio, jazz, opera, and musical theatre.

Standards for Music:

1. Singing. Students will sing, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music.
2. Reading and Notation. Students will read music written in standard notation.
3. Playing Instruments. Students will play instruments, alone and with others, to perform a varied repertoire of music.
4. Improvisation and Composition. Students will improvise, compose, and arrange music.
5. Critical Response. Students will describe and analyze their own music and the music of others using appropriate music vocabulary. When appropriate, students will connect their analysis to interpretation and evaluation.

Connections:

1. Purposes and Meanings in the Arts. Students will describe the purposes for which works of dance, music, theatre, visual arts, and architecture were and are created, and, when appropriate, interpret their meanings.
2. Roles of Artists in Communities. Students will describe the roles of artists, patrons, cultural organizations, and arts institutions in societies of the past and present.
3. Concepts of Style, Stylistic Influence, and Stylistic Change. Students will demonstrate their understanding of styles, stylistic influence, and stylistic change by identifying when and where art works were created, and by analyzing characteristic features of artworks from various historical periods, cultures, and genres.
4. Inventions, Technologies, and the Arts. Students will describe and analyze how performing and visual artists use and have used materials, inventions, and technologies in their work.
5. Interdisciplinary Connections. Students will apply their knowledge of the arts to the study of English language arts, foreign languages, health, history and social science, mathematics, and science and technology/engineering.

Please feel free to contact me ( klewis@cohassetk12.org) at any time with questions or concerns. I am at Deer Hill School on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday every week.