Classical Music
The history of classical music can be a project in its own right: there are a wealth of materials available which focus on individual composers or periods, but the initial point of entry will depend on you. You might choose to explore the historical context, and to link with the sciences, geography, art, astronomy literature, politics … any discipline that you are interested in. If you play an instrument, it will enrich the work, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t.
These are the beginnings of projects: some begin with a picture, others with a text or just an idea. Some come from other areas of the curriculum. All of them can be developed, depending on your own aims and interests.
The stories of those who wrote the music (the famous and those history has almost forgotten), the places they lived and their connections to the past and the future, are huge topics of exploration. Hildegard Von Bingen, pictured above, was born nearly a thousand years ago, and is the first composer whose biography we have any real idea of. Sergi Prokofiev died on the day Stalin’s death was announced. Baroque composer Pachelbel’s Canon in D is familiar to most people, but his life is less well known. Clara Schumann said, “A woman must not desire to compose—there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?”
Music is liquid architecture; I call architecture frozen music.
Goethe
music and the sciences
“The Goldberg Variations is a good example of how symmetry is not just a physical property but pervades many abstract structures”
Maths and Music
Alexander Borodin was a chemist who composed music as a hobby. He promoted women’s education in Russia, and set up the School of Medicine for Women in St Petersburg.
Chemistry and Music
The Italian composer and pianist Einaudi performed his Elegy for the Arctic on floating ice, in Svalbard, in front of a crumbling glacier, to raise awareness for a Greenpeace campaign.
Ecology and Music
Medicine and Music
A thousand years ago, Hildegard of Bingen, an abbess and polymath, wrote texts on natural sciences and medicine in her monastery, as well as beautiful music for her nuns to sing.
Music can be a way into the past, and can combine with biology, anthropology and physics, among other disciplines, to understand how and why and what type of music people made.
Archaeology and Music
“I would teach children music, physics and philosophy; but most of all music, for in the patterns of music and all the arts are the keys of learning”
Classical music and politics
Music and geopolitics provide an opportunity to understand the context of the compositions, and the concerns of the composers. Many were directly involved in the political developments and actions of the time, while for others an understanding of their lives and the society they were writing in can illuminate and extend historical and geographical understanding. If you are studying history, the lives of the Russian composers Prokofiev, Rachmaninov and Shostakovich (among many), allow an insight into the machinations of Soviet Russia. If you are teaching younger children, you may want to look more at the places they lived in. (The Hermitage cats in Saint Petersburg are a good starting point!)
Classical music and politics
Music and geopolitics provide the opportunity to understand the context of the compositions, and the concerns of the composers.
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The Simon Bolivar Orchestra
Music for social change
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The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
“an ongoing dialogue”
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Farewell to Stromness
Protest against a proposed uranium mine
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Finlandia monument
Sibelius’ protest against censorship