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Todays lesson will familiarize students with a medieval style of polyphony called organum in
order to gain an appreciation both compositionally and historically for writing primarily in
parallel fourths and fifths. The lessons following will deal with these intervals from a later
historical viewpoint in which they are forbidden intervals and because of this lesson,
students will have a perspective on why this is the case.
Grade Level: 9-12
Type of Music Class: AP Music Theory
Number of Students: 15
Established Goals:
MU:Pr4.2.HSIII
Analyze how the elements of music (including form), and compositional techniques of selected
works relate to the style, function, and context, and explain and support the analysis and its
implications for rehearsal and performance.
MU:Re9.1.C.HSIII
Evaluate the effectiveness of the technical and expressive aspects of selected music and
performances, demonstrating understanding of theoretical concepts and
complex compositional techniques and procedures.
MU:Cn11.0.C.HSIII
Demonstrate understanding of relationships between music and the other arts, other
disciplines, varied contexts, and daily life.
MU:Cr3.2.C.HSIII
Share music through the use of notation, solo or group performance, or technology,
and demonstrate and explain how the elements of music, compositional techniques and
processes have been employed to realize expressive intent.
Enduring Understanding: The aesthetic principles of a given time reflect the values and beliefs
of the people who create art. These principles are sometimes formulated into guidelines or
rules, through which artists can more easily create works of art. When we listen to music of a
different era than our own, we are partly transported to a different time period, and can
experience the aesthetic principles of a time not our own.
Essential Questions: Can music express beliefs? Can the way music is constructed tell us
something about the values and beliefs of the people who wrote this music?
Musical concepts addressed: analysis of compositions, form, melody, counterpoint, harmony
Target Academic Language: melody, harmony, chant, contrary motion, parallel motion, perfect,
augmented, and diminished intervals
Social concepts addressed: the reflection of religious beliefs in works of art, the value of
aesthetic systems, the relationship between art and systems, such as rules
Materials: audio equipment, mp3 player, whiteboard and different colored erasable markers
(black, green, red, blue), printed handouts
Learning Plan
1. Intro and Exploration (7 minutes):
Class will begin with a listening example: Alleluia: Justus ut palma
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR9xkGmUjIo, an example of the 12th century
organum technique from which polyphony evolved.
Students will be asked what emotional quality the music has and how it makes them
feel (Possible responses include: calm, peaceful, meditative, like Im in church, like I
am listening to another world).
Students will be asked to describe the features of the music that give rise to the
qualities they mentioned, and will be directed to pay particular attention to the
following attributes: vocal range, dynamic range, and the overall pacing of the music.
After listening to their responses, students will be asked what intervals they heard when
the voices sang in more parts than just at the unison.
List appropriate answers on the white board: perfect 4ths, perfect 5ths, octaves, and
unisons. These are the harmonies of the old harmonic style called organum.
Students will be posed the following question: If you wanted to write music like this,
how could you imitate it? The answer will be two part: first, you need a suitable basic
melody line, such as the chant melody line, and second, you will need to harmonize this
line with the intervals we have just listed on the board.
2. Analysis and Composition (10 minutes):
Give students a handout with a transcription of the Alleluia
Students will be given two minutes to analyze the organum on the handout. We will
immediately review the answers in class, to make sure that everyone has correctly
identified the intervals.
The students will then be given three minutes to compose their own organum
accompaniment to the chant line provided in the next example on the worksheet, and
they will have 3 minutes to do so. They will pick either a perfect fourth or fifth with
which to create their preliminary organum in exclusively parallel motion (students will
already be familiar with parallel, similar, and contrary motion from previous learning in
class).
The organum compositions will be played on the keyboard in class by the teacher (and
students comfortable with playing in front of their peers) so that the students can hear
their compositions and evaluate them. Attention will be paid closely to see and hear if
there are any intervals that are not perfect fourths, or fifths, with particular care to find
diminished fifths or augmented fourths, which look fine on paper but will sound peculiar
in the context of the perfect intervals. These intervals (B-F or F-B in the key of C) need
to be modified with accidentals (B-flat or F-sharp) in order to conform to organum style.
If any of these intervals are found, teacher will repeat the interval and ask the student
composer if the sound sticks out to their ear or disturbs the sound in the context of the
piece. This interval is forbidden in the organum style in which we are working, and the
prohibitions regarding the use of this interval are many, and have lasting historical
implications (which we will cover in a different unit) that remain central to the AP Music
Theory test. We will review our examples, and any students with faulty intervals will be
asked to think of how to fix this problem: there are two possible choices: first, to write
a different interval, and second, to add an accidental in order to modify the harmony.
This will lead us into a discussion of rules and aesthetics.
3. Class discussion (5 minutes):
Teacher will pose the question What are rules, and why do we have them? We have
many different types of rules that affect our lives in a variety of ways. What are they
for? Students will likely answer that we have rules so that society can function
properly, so that less accidents happen, so that we can know what is expected in some
situations.
The teacher will ask, Why do we have rules in art? Are they rules like the rules by
which society functions? The aim of this discussion is to connect rules with the
aesthetics of a given time, and that in art very often the rules are not rules at all (in the
sense of laws), but principles that help artists fulfill the aesthetic goals of their time,
often making this goal easier to reach.
4. Composition Practice (13 minutes):
Students will now be given 5 minutes to write another organum harmonization, this
time in a style with greater freedom: they may choose between any of the following
intervals: perfect fourths, fifths, octaves, and unisons, with one condition one rule if
they write an octave or a unison, the voices must move in opposite directions to
approach the interval: this movement is called contrary motion.
An example of correct writing will be demonstrated on the white board in class, as well
as two incorrect examples.
We will review their compositions at the keyboard, with emphasis paid to correct use of
intervals (no thirds, or sevenths, or sixths), correct handling perfect intervals and proper
use of accidentals to avoid diminished fifths or perfect fourths, and correct approach of
the octave from the previous tones, so that contrary motion is achieved.
5. Reflection and Assessment (5 minutes):
Listen again to the Alleluia: Justus ut palma, but now with the insight of having worked
in the style. Students will be asked to listen critically to the interval combinations again,
and will be able to more clearly hear them and the way that they are used than when
they heard the composition at the beginning of the class. After working with perfect
fourths and fifths, octaves, and unisons, students will be able to grasp the technical
features of this style with greater ease.
Assignment for homework: students will write their own harmonization of a chant,
beginning and ending on an octave or unison. This will make a kind of formal marker for
beginning and ending for their piece, and will be a third aesthetic rule for them to be on
the lookout for. They will have to plan their composition in order to achieve the unison
at the end, so long-range compositional planning begins to be an element of their
thinking in this style, though at a basic level
Learning Plan
1. Intro and Exploration (5 minutes):
The class will be invited to imagine that they are living in Leipzig in 1730, and are music
students: The local Kantor, who writes music that is a little strange and overly
complicated, is going to teach the young scholars the rudiments of accompanying the
small chamber orchestra on the harpsichord. The harpsichord is used for practically
every music event: it is always there, playing ever in the background, a continuous
plane of sound against which all other instruments are heard. It is a most necessary
element of the Baroque style, and good harpsichordists are always in short supply. The
Kantor one Johann Sebastian Bach is running late because of yet another
disagreement with the town council over his music, but he has invited me to instruct
you in the basics of keyboard style.
Before we begin instruction, we will listen to a two-minute excerpt from the following
piece by Bach, played on period instruments: J.S. Bach - Trio Sonata for Violin, Oboe and
Continuo in G-Major, BWV 1039 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gcrk_95epO4 The
students will hear how the harpsichord functions in the background, supporting the
violin and oboe continuously.
Materials: audio equipment, mp3 player, whiteboard and different colored erasable markers
(black, green, red, blue), printed handouts
Learning Plan
1. Intro and Exploration (5 minutes):
Begin with a line of questions: when is it ok to break the rules? Ever? Never? Does this
change if you are talking about social rules or artistic/aesthetic rules? Is it ok to change
social rules? How do we change them? Why do we change them? What about rules in
art? Do we ever change them? Or break them on purpose? Why do we do this? The
purpose of this discussion will be to involve students in a thought process that we will
tap into later in class. A variety of answers is possible to any of these questions: Yes, it
is alright to break the rules, if the rules are bad ones or Sometimes we change the
rules to reflect changes in society that the rules didnt keep up with or Rules in art are
different: they arent really rules, so it is ok to break them or Rules in art can change
often, as people change their tastes.
each other. The note b serves as a leading tone to c, and the sense of pull towards c
that it has ultimately overwhelms our considerations for contrary motion. There are no
parallel octaves, even though we are going in similar motion, and so composers of the
time accepted this motion for this cadence.
Write out, in similar motion, the alternate versions for the other cadences, leaving us
with 6 cadence possibilities. We will follow the same procedure as in section 2 of this
lesson plan, with students naming the notes and position of the new triads, now in
similar motion with regard to the bass.
Students who have not yet responded in section 2 will be called on for the above
exercise.
Enduring Understanding: Composers use a variety of tools and methods in order to create
works of art. A composer trains in several different techniques which are used together, with a
balance of each technique that relates to and reinforces the meaning of the form of the work.
Essential Questions: How are techniques of music (such as writing in contrary motion, avoiding
forbidden parallels, and writing cadences) synthesized into larger structural and artistic forms?
Musical concepts addressed: figured bass line, chorale harmonization and realization,
cadences as structural organizers, common tone motion
Social concepts addressed: Congregational singing and the difference between chant style and
chorale style, and the change in the system of religious belief and social order that creates and
accompanies a change in artistic and musical style.
Materials: audio equipment, mp3 player, whiteboard and different colored erasable markers
(black, green, red, blue), printed handouts
Learning Plan
Students will be given a bass line similar to the one realized in class to do for a
homework assignment. This bass line will be only two stanzas rather than the three for
class, and will contain the two unusual bass indications featured in class: the 6/4 chord
and the 7th chord, in order to reinforce developing mastery of these figures.
Enduring Understanding: There is a balance between aesthetics and rules and art, and the way
in which we approach solving the problem of this balance is closely related to the creation of
our own unique musical style. Depending on the time period, and thus the aesthetic a
composer is interested in, different solutions are created to fundamental artistic problems,
such as creating the sense of completion and finality at a structural point.
Essential Questions: How do we create musical style? How does the solving of artistic
problems give us an opportunity to develop our own musical style?
Musical concepts addressed: contrary motion, similar motion, forbidden parallels, figured
bass, common-tone motion, accidentals, cadence styles
Social concepts addressed: Style is a feature of artistic work that is related to how we see the
aesthetics of our own time. The specific details of our solutions to general artistic problems are
what give our music a sense of personal style.
Materials: audio equipment, mp3 player, whiteboard and different colored erasable markers
(black, green, red, blue), printed handouts
Learning Plan
1. Intro and Exploration (5 minutes):
As part of the AP Theory exam, students will have to identify examples of writing
containing mistakes. In order to develop this skill, the teacher will present students with
a worksheet of cadence realizations in keyboard style that contains different types of
errors.
Review the types of errors we will be looking for on the worksheet: parallel fifths and
octaves, wrong intervals, too large leaps, similar motion leading to a perfect interval
(fifth or octave) in the outer voices, and missing accidentals.
2. Group Work (10 minutes):
Students will be directed to form groups of three.
Each group will be assigned one particular example from the worksheet to analyze for
mistakes. Students will identify what the mistake or mistakes are in their example, and
will provide the solution, as well as identify the principle by which the solution is made
(for example, contrary motion).
Teacher will visit each group to check for questions and to encourage students, as well
as to make sure that all groups are focused and on task.
Groups who finish their problem within the ten minutes will be directed to a new
example to solve.
3. Presentations (20 minutes):
Students will present their findings and solutions group by group on the board. Each
group will be called, one at a time, to do a mini-lesson for the class on their particular
segment of the worksheet. For each group, students will identify problems, label the
correct cadence type, and give their solution.
Teacher will facilitate student presentation, making sure that students have correctly
identified all problems, and when necessary guiding students to find correct solutions.
Some problems have multiple mistakes, such as parallel octaves and incorrect figured
bass realization, and students must perceive both.
Group presentations should be encouraging, and after each group covers their material
completely, teacher will lead class in a round of applause for the students (unless
students start applause spontaneously, which is quite possible with this encouraging
and supportive group).
4. Assessment:
This is the final lesson in this unit, and students will be asked to write a short essay of
600-800 words with the following prompt: What is the purpose of learning the rules of
western classical music theory? What tools, skills, and awareness do you gain by
studying these rules? Are these rules truly rules?