Music and Composers Unit Study

Music has been part of family life for as long as people have gathered to sing, clap, and dance. Composers are the people who write that music down so others can play it, sometimes hundreds of years later. Children who learn a little about Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and the composers who followed them start to hear the difference between a quiet Baroque minuet and a thundering symphony, and they begin to pick out the instruments that make each sound.

This Music and Composers Unit Study walks through the main periods of music history, the families of the orchestra, and the basic words musicians use to talk about pitch, rhythm, and speed. Almost everything here can be done for free with library books, free online recordings, pots and pans from the kitchen, and a few homemade instruments built from things you already have around the house.

Learning Objectives

• Name the main periods of Western music history (Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern) and put several composers in the right period.
• Tell the life story of at least three composers and listen to a well-known piece by each one.
• Sort instruments into the families of the orchestra: strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and keyboard.
• Hear and describe the difference between high and low pitch, loud and soft dynamics, and fast and slow tempo.
• Clap and echo simple rhythm patterns and keep a steady beat.
• Recognize different styles of music, such as classical, folk, jazz, ragtime, and music from other countries.
• Build a simple homemade instrument and explain how it makes its sound.

Timeline

Add these dates to your timeline. Older students can add each composer’s birth and death year as they study them.

• About 1025: An Italian monk named Guido of Arezzo comes up with a system of lines and syllables that makes it easier to teach singers new melodies. It grows into the staff we still use to write music.
• About 1600: The Baroque period begins. Opera is born in Italy around this time.
• 1685: Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel are both born in Germany, less than a month apart.
• About 1700: Bartolomeo Cristofori builds the first piano in Florence, Italy. Unlike the harpsichord, it can play both soft and loud.
• 1717: Handel’s Water Music is played for King George I on a barge floating down the Thames River in London.
• 1725: Antonio Vivaldi publishes The Four Seasons, four violin concertos that paint spring, summer, fall, and winter in sound.
• 1750: Bach dies, and the Baroque period comes to a close. The Classical period follows.
• 1756: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is born in Salzburg, Austria. He is writing music by the age of five.
• 1770: Ludwig van Beethoven is born in Bonn, Germany.
• 1791: Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute opens in Vienna, just a few months before he dies at age 35.
• 1810: Frederic Chopin, the Romantic composer known for his piano music, is born in Poland.
• 1824: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is performed for the first time in Vienna. By then he is almost completely deaf.
• 1840: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is born in Russia.
• 1892: Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker opens in St. Petersburg.
• 1899: Scott Joplin publishes Maple Leaf Rag, and ragtime piano spreads across America.
• 1924: George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue mixes jazz and classical music for the first time in a big concert hall.
• 1936: Sergei Prokofiev writes Peter and the Wolf, a story for narrator and orchestra that teaches children the instruments.
• 1944: Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, with its famous Shaker tune, has its first performance.
• 1946: Benjamin Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra is first performed. It shows off each family of instruments one at a time.

Vocabulary

composer	conductor	orchestra
symphony	concerto	opera
melody	harmony	rhythm
beat	tempo	pitch
dynamics	forte	piano (soft)
crescendo	staccato	legato
score	staff	genre
Baroque	Classical	Romantic
strings	woodwinds	brass
percussion	solo	duet
quartet	round

• WordWeb: Free downloadable dictionary software.
• Dictionary.com: Online definitions and pronunciation.

Book Resources

• Stories of Great Musicians: Short life stories of famous composers written for children by Kathrine Lois Scobey and Olive Brown Horne, free on Project Gutenberg.
• Story-Lives of Great Musicians: Longer biographies by Francis Jameson Rowbotham for older readers, free on Project Gutenberg.
• Stories From the Operas: Gladys Davidson retells the plots of famous operas. A free audiobook from LibriVox.
• Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Composers by Mike Venezia: A series of short, funny picture biographies. Pick the books for the composers you study.
• Beethoven Lives Upstairs by Barbara Nichol: A boy writes letters to his uncle about the odd composer who rents the room upstairs.
• The Farewell Symphony by Anna Harwell Celenza: How Joseph Haydn used music to send his employer a message. Comes with a CD.
• Sebastian: A Book About Bach by Jeanette Winter: A simple picture book about Bach’s life and family.
• Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin by Lloyd Moss: A rhyming counting book that adds one instrument at a time until a whole chamber group is playing.
• The Story of the Orchestra by Robert Levine: Composers, periods, and instruments, with a CD of listening examples.
• The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra by Anita Ganeri: A book and CD built around Britten’s piece.
• The Usborne Story of Music: A colorful overview of music history from ancient times to today.
• Eyewitness Music by Neil Ardley: Photos of instruments from around the world and how they work.
• Bravo! Brava! A Night at the Opera by Anne Siberell: A behind-the-scenes look at how an opera is put together.
• Mama Don’t Allow by Thacher Hurd: Miles and his swamp band play for a party of hungry alligators.
• Abiyoyo by Pete Seeger: A folk song story about a boy, his ukulele, and a giant.
• The Gift of Music by Jane Stuart Smith and Betty Carlson: Short chapters on dozens of great composers for teens and parents.

Poetry and Music

• Listen to Peter and the Wolf by Prokofiev and name the instrument that plays each character.
• Play Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saens and guess which animal each section is describing before you read the title.
• Listen to one season from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons each week and talk about what you hear: birds, storms, ice, or a sleepy summer afternoon.
• Sing rounds like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and “Frere Jacques” and split the family into two or three groups.
• Learn a folk song from another country and find where it comes from on a map.
• Write a short poem about a piece of music, then read it aloud while the music plays softly in the background.

Videos

• Classical Kids: Beethoven Lives Upstairs: The movie version of the book, plus others in the series such as Bach’s Fight for Freedom and Handel’s Last Chance.
• Fantasia: The 1940 Disney film that sets cartoons to Bach, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Stravinsky, and others.
• The Waltz King: A 1963 Disney movie about Johann Strauss II and his waltzes.
• The Sound of Music: The classic musical. Children love learning “Do-Re-Mi” along with the von Trapp family.

After watching Fantasia, choose a short piece of music and draw your own cartoon scenes to go with it.

Activities

• Water Glass Xylophone: Fill six to eight glasses or jars with different amounts of water. Tap each one gently with a spoon, line them up from lowest to highest sound, and try to play a simple tune.
• Pots and Pans Echo: Turn a few pots and pans upside down and use wooden spoons as drumsticks. One person taps a short rhythm and the others copy it. Make the patterns longer as everyone gets better.
• High and Low: Sing a high note, a middle note, and a low note and have your child copy each one. Then let your child lead.
• Loud and Soft: Sing a song you know very softly (piano), then very loudly (forte). Try getting louder little by little for a crescendo.
• Short and Smooth: Sing a song with short, bouncy notes like popping popcorn (staccato), then with long, gliding notes like skating (legato).
• Tempo Walk: Walk around the room to music at different speeds. Use the Italian words: largo (very slow), adagio (slow), allegro (quick and cheerful), and presto (very fast).
• Listening Journal: Play a short piece and have everyone draw what the music makes them think of. Compare the pictures and talk about why they look different.
• Composer of the Month: Pick one composer each month. Read a biography, listen to a few pieces while you do chores or eat lunch, and add the composer to your timeline.
• Conduct the Orchestra: Learn the simple arm patterns for two, three, and four beats and conduct along with a march, a waltz, and a symphony.
• Compose a Song: Use the free Song Maker listed under Information Web Resources to write and play back a short tune of your own.
• Music Around the World: Make a mini concert of one-minute clips in very different styles, such as Baroque, folk, jazz, opera, and music from Africa or Asia. Vote on the family favorite.

• Name That Tune: Hum the first few notes of a familiar song or classical piece and see who can name it first. Take turns being the hummer.
• Composer Musical Chairs: Play a piece by a composer you have studied. When the music stops, the player left standing has to name the composer or the instrument they heard.
• Freeze Dance Dynamics: Dance big when the music is loud and small when it is soft, and freeze when it stops.
• Instrument Family Sort: Cut pictures of instruments from old catalogs or draw them on index cards, then race to sort them into strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and keyboard.
• Composer’s Journey Board Game: On a file folder, draw a path that runs through Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern sections. Add spaces like “Your concert sold out! Move ahead 2” and “You lost your sheet music. Go back 1.” Players roll a die and answer a question card to move.

Composer Go Fish Card Game

Make a set of four cards for each composer you study. For Bach, the four cards could say Bach, Baroque, Germany, and Brandenburg Concertos. For Mozart, try Mozart, Classical, Austria, and The Magic Flute. Beethoven could be Beethoven, Classical and Romantic, Germany, and Fifth Symphony. Tchaikovsky could be Tchaikovsky, Romantic, Russia, and The Nutcracker. Keep going with Vivaldi, Handel, Chopin, Joplin, Gershwin, and Copland until you have ten sets. Deal five cards to each player and play Go Fish, asking for a composer by name. When you collect all four cards for a composer, lay the set down and say one fact about that person.

These cards also work as question cards for the Composer’s Journey board game and any other homemade board games for this unit.

GeoSafari Card Ideas

• Composers and Countries: Find the country where each composer was born on a map of Europe or the world.
• Instrument Families: Match each instrument picture to its family.
• Famous Pieces: Match a famous piece to the composer who wrote it.
• Music Periods: Match each composer to the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, or Modern period.
• Music Words: Match each vocabulary word to its meaning.

Recipes

Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria, where bakers still sell little chocolate balls named after him. This no-bake version is easy for children to roll. Every ingredient here is naturally gluten-free, but always check labels for a gluten-free claim, especially on the chocolate and the chocolate spread, so the treat is safe for anyone with celiac disease.

Easy Mozart Chocolate Balls (Gluten-Free)

• 1 cup blanched almond flour (labeled gluten-free)
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon honey or light corn syrup
• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 to 2 teaspoons water, as needed
• About 1/4 cup gluten-free chocolate hazelnut spread
• 1 cup gluten-free chocolate chips, melted

Stir the almond flour, powdered sugar, honey, and almond extract together. Add water a few drops at a time until the mixture holds together like play dough. Pinch off a piece the size of a walnut, flatten it in your palm, put a small dab of chocolate spread in the middle, and roll it into a ball so the filling is hidden. Chill the balls for 20 minutes. Dip each one in the melted chocolate with a fork, set it on wax paper or parchment, and chill again until firm.

For a nut-free version, mix 1/2 cup sunflower seed butter with 1/4 cup powdered sugar and 1 cup certified gluten-free crisp rice cereal (many regular brands contain barley malt), roll into balls, and dip in chocolate the same way.

Field Trips

• Go to a youth concert or an open rehearsal of a local symphony orchestra. Many orchestras offer free or low-cost tickets for children and homeschool groups.
• Check the calendar at a nearby college music department. Student recitals are often free and short enough for young children.
• Look for summer band concerts in the park, a free way to hear brass and woodwind instruments up close.
• Visit a music store and ask if someone can show the children how a few instruments work. Talk about which instruments the store sells the most of and why.
• Ask an instrument repair shop or a piano tuner if your group can watch them work.
• Many towns have an opera house or historic theater that gives tours.
• Ask around your community. A neighbor may build drums, play the fiddle, or sing in a choir and would be happy to share.

Art and Craft Ideas

• Rain Stick: Push a long piece of crumpled aluminum foil into a paper towel tube or wrapping paper tube. Add a handful of rice, dried beans, or small pasta, tape both ends closed, and decorate the outside.
• Box Guitar: Stretch rubber bands of different thicknesses around an empty tissue box, shoebox, or plastic food container. Slide a pencil under the bands near one end to lift them, then pluck.
• Homemade Drum: Use an oatmeal canister, coffee can, cookie tin, or plastic bucket. Stretch a balloon or a piece of a paper grocery bag over the top and tape it down.
• Shakers: Fill plastic eggs, small water bottles, or yogurt cups with rice, beans, buttons, or beads and seal them tightly. Compare how each filling sounds.
• Straw Pan Flute: Cut drinking straws to different lengths, line them up from longest to shortest, and tape them together. Blow across the tops.
• Paper Plate Tambourine: Staple two paper plates together with dried beans inside, or punch holes around the edge and tie on jingle bells or bottle caps.
• Composer Portrait: Look at a picture of a composer and draw or paint your own portrait, then write three facts underneath.

Information Web Resources

• Musopen: Free classical recordings and sheet music that families can download and use.
• DSO Kids: The Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s pages for children about the instruments and the orchestra.
• Chrome Music Lab Song Maker: A free online tool where children can build a song on a grid and hear it played back.

Worksheets

Lapbook Ideas

• Instrument Families Flap Book: One flap each for strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and keyboard, with drawings of instruments underneath.
• Composer Mini-Books: A small book for each composer with their country, dates, and a favorite piece.
• Music Periods Timeline: A fold-out strip from Medieval to Modern with one composer on each panel.
• Note Values Pocket: Cards for whole, half, quarter, and eighth notes with how many beats each one gets.
• Dynamics and Tempo Wheel: A paper wheel that turns to show forte, piano, crescendo, largo, adagio, allegro, and presto.
• Listening Log: A small booklet to record each piece you listened to and one word that describes it.
• Vocabulary Matchbook: Each vocabulary word on the outside and its meaning inside.

Evaluation Ideas

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Related Unit Studies from Homeschooling on a Shoestring

• Germany Unit Study
• Poetry Unit Study
• William Shakespeare Unit Study