Doering 1

Jennifer Doering
Julie Nichols
Bringing Music Into the Classroom
27 October 2014
Midterm - All the Pretty Little Horses
- The first standard, Artistic Perception, is about discovering all kinds of music from around the
world and across time periods. This can be done by beginning to use and identify music
elements. For this song, All the Pretty Little Horses, there are two phrases in the refrain. There
are mostly minor chords throughout the song, although there are some major ones starting at
measure 6 (G and C). They follow the pattern, I IV vii V I iii vi vii V I IV vii V I. The song is in
a minor key (e minor); it is in 4/4 time, where each quarter note gets one beat of the four beats
per measure; the sections that repeat are measures 1 and 10, 3, 8, and 12, 1-4 and 10-14, 2-4,
8-9, and 11-12, and the lyrics repeat.
- The second standard, Creative Expression, is the actual performance of music. It is all about
performing and experimenting with music. Playing this song in class fulfills this standard.
- The third standard, Historical and Cultural Context, is about understanding the context of the
music, the history of the song and the culture and time period that it was written during. The
definitive context of this song is unknown, although there are many speculations. It is a lullaby
and may have an African-American origin, where a slave woman is lulling her masters baby to
sleep, reminding the child of all his material possessions (the pretty horses), while the slaves
own neglected baby cries for his mother. Some versions of the song include a verse about this
neglected baby.

Doering 2
- The fourth standard, Aesthetic Valuing, causes students to realize what it is about music that
makes it special and beautiful. It is about taking the technical aspects of a piece of music and
applying them to ones own feelings about the music, in an effort to explain why we have those
feelings. For this song, there is a melancholy feeling throughout the piece, one of longing and
sadness. This is caused by the minor key, and is also influenced by the history of the song. The
slave mother is longing for her own child and is sad that she is unable to sing to him.