Sarah Labrie

Secondary Praxis
Spring 2014
Listening Lesson Plan Based on Stauffer Listening Lesson Sequence
Objectives:
--Get students to think outside the box as far as what defines music.
--Get students to like sound to sight and sight to sound.
1. Prepare:
--What sort of sounds can you make with your body? (voice, body percussion, etc.)
--Write down students ideas on board.
--Draw a straight line, and a squiggly line on board, with a couple shapes interrupting the
lines. Have students use some of their body sound ideas to follow the notation. IN
THEIR OWN RANGE.
2. Listen and Identify:
--Ask the students to continue thinking of their definition of music.
--Have students pull out a piece of paper, and listen for key things in the sound (When
new voices come in, whether the line is straight or wobbly, and what sort of violin
sounds they hear.
--Play beginning of piece.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HilGthRhwP8
3.Participate/Process:
--Play the piece again, showing the animated score this time.
--Have students sing along/use their body percussion according to the shapes they see in
the notation.
4. Question/Response/Information
--What did you hear?
--What does this piece remind you of?
--Why would someone write a piece like this?
--Piece: Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima by Krysztof Penderecki
--Composed in 1960
--Originally called 837 (As a gesture to reflect John Cage)
--The piece was only named after Penderecki heard his piece performed for the first time.
He said "It existed only in my imagination, in a somewhat abstract way." When he heard
an actual performance, "I was struck by the emotional charge of the work...I searched for
associations and, in the end, I decided to dedicate it to the Hiroshima victims". The piece

tends to leave an impression both solemn and catastrophic, earning its classification as a
threnody. On October 12, 1964, Penderecki wrote, "Let the Threnody express my firm
belief that the sacrifice of Hiroshima will never be forgotten and lost."
-Symbol-based score
--Sound-mass composition
--A threnody is a song, hymn or poem of mourning composed or performed as a
memorial to a dead person. The term originates from the Greek word threnoidia, from
threnos ( "wailing") + oide ("ode");[1][2] ultimately, from the Proto-Indo-European root
wed- ("to speak") that is also the precursor of such words as "ode", "tragedy", "comedy",
"parody", "melody" and "rhapsody".
--The atomic bombings of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan were conducted
by the United States during the final stages of World War II in August 1945. To date the
two bombings are the only instance of the use of nuclear weapons in wartime.
5. Listen Again:
-- Play a different section of the piece.
-- Ask the students to focus on how the instruments interpret the symbol-based score, and
to think of how else they might interpret it. (Volume versus pitch change, etc.)
6. Connect:
--Have the students make their own musical drawings for the rest of the class to interpret
and perform together. Make something that you like the look of, not necessarily
something youll like the sound of.
--Show artwork relating to Hiroshima. Ask if the paintings look like what they heard.