Abe+&+Jon

= = =__ **Developing Fluency Through the Medium of Vocal Music** __=

In this lesson, we were planning for an 9th grade level. [Although this could be done with senior students and college students from a more analytical and creative level: composing vocal lines, shaping phrases to make sense poetically, and text painting]

Our first lesson was based off of solo vocal literature, and relating it to development of fluency. The students wrote sentences carefully, and performed them through the medium of spoken poetry. After, they were provided a Shakespeare poem, and performed it spoken again. They were then provided with a recording of Roger Quilter setting the text to music. Afterwards, they compared how they performed the spoken poetry, and how Quilter set the text. The goal is for the students to discuss the following ideas.

__Concepts (both in music, and speech):__ Articulations Inflection Prosody Legato Phrasing



**__Teaching Reviews__**


The first book that we chose to add to our lesson is //Aïda,// as told by Leontyne Price. The narrative is a story of a young Ethiopian princess, named Aïda, who gets captured by her country's rival in war: Egypt. She is sentences to be a slave, yet her beauty inspires the Pharaohto give her as a gift to his daughter. Aïda falls in love with the captain of the Egyptian army, and he falls in love with her. He plans to unite the two countries, and live in peaceful love with her. However, the Pharaoh's daughter is also in love with the captain. When Egypt marches to war with Ethiopia, the Pharaoh's daughter tricks Aïda, and tells her that the captain has died in order to make sure she is in love. When Aïda weeps openly, the daughter is enraged that the young "slave" is in love with the captain. The captain returns victorious, and at the same time, Aïda discovers that her father is also serving as a slave. The captain sees Aïda run to her father, and he requests as a wish of victory, that the slaves are freed. The Pharaoh allows this, but keeps Aïda's father. The Pharaoh also tells the captain that he will marry his daughter after such a victory. Aïda meets with her father, and explains her love,e but her father forces her to betray the captain into giving the Ethiopian army a route to invade Egypt. Aïda does so, but with a broken heart. Once the captain divulges the only open route into Egypt, Aïda's father attacks with his army. The daughter of the Pharaoh had followed the captain, suspicious of his actions, and calls him a traitor. The captain stops Aïda's father from murdering the daughter, and stalls for Aïda to escape. When returned to the Pharaoh, the captain is declared a traitor, and sentences to be buried alive in the deepest vault possible. To the captain's surprise, Aïda had hidden in the vault, waiting for him. They are buried together, and although the captain cannot open the vault, Aïda calms him. They hold tight to one another, set in each others embrace forever.

This is a fairly clear extension to our project, as it follows the same basic idea as our lesson. The book can be read as a narrative performance, or even acted out as a play from portions the libretto. The narrative reading helps with spoken fluency, and can also help with vocabulary (as there are many foreign words that young students may not know). From there, it can also be compared to the opera performance to see how Verdi set the text, and more importantly, why.

For example, the aria that Radames (the captain) sings from the opera, "Se quel guerrier lo fossi!" is a wonderful, touching piece. The vocal lines are aching with the emotion of the text, and it is a great activity to look at the highest and loudest points, and discuss why Verdi made the choice to have that line or words leap up in the melody. On the contrary, the students can also look at the softest points, and why Verdi chose to accentuate that text with softness.

If time is a factor, specific scenes can be extracted from the opera or book to look at. Any of the emotionally packed scenes would work perfectly, Radames singing about Aida, Aida to her father, the Pharaoh's daughter's rage, etc. Arias can be split into multiple days of analysis, since some can be rather long, or you may just shorten the activity to include a portion of the aria. Since this opera is a fairly dramatic performance, students will easily be able to discuss prosody, specific inflection, and articulations in many instances.


 * God Bless the Child **

By Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog Jr. Illustrated by Jerry Pinkey

 The text of the book God Bless the Child is that of Billie Holiday’s song of the same name. Only seven of the twenty-nine pages in the story have text; all others are entirely illustration. The text of the song praises those who have the values of initiative and hard work. The illustrations tell the story of “a family moving from the rural South to the urban North during the great migration.”Certain activities with this book would make natural extensions from our original lesson about fluency. Because the text is actually poetry (specifically, song lyrics), it poses unique challenges and opportunities for readers with regard to fluency. First, we have all experienced the narcotic effects of poetry read as though absolute rhythm were sufficient for expression. To perform this text with prosody, the reader must make specific decisions as to which lines should have a pause after them and which should not, how to negotiate normal syllabic emphasis of each word with the apparent emphasis patterns of the lines, etc. Readers must also decide how to vary and add interest to lines of text that are repeated verbatim immediately. The following occurs 3 times in the book: “But God bless the child/That’s got his own!/That’s got his own.” The text, separated from the music, is awkward at times, due to choices that the writers made to fit the text with the music (or at least the pattern of the poetry), as in the following line: “And it still is news.” That is clearly not phrased as a modern student would naturally speak. Elements of African American dialect are also written into the poetry because of the way Holiday sang them. These include grammatical elements, as in the phrase “That’s got his own,” as well as word endings (“lots o’ friends” and “crowdin’”).

Consider the following activities as ways to expand the lesson:


 * 1) Assign seven students one page each of text to study briefly and decide on how they will perform their page for the class. Have a joint reading of the book. Discuss the similarities and differences between the ways students performed different pages with the same text on them (the “chorus” of the song). Talk about why they made the decisions they did. What did they do that seemed to help the text flow naturally and convey the meaning of the story?
 * 2) Listen to Billie Holiday sing God Bless the Child as a class, while following along in the book. Afterward, compare Holiday’s performance to the class performance. What were the differences? What did the music add to the storytelling? What made her performance sound natural?

__**Supporting Web 2.0 Tools**__
[|LyricsFly]

A great lyrics based search engine. The engine is fairly open, and you can put anything in the search bar, and then search under whatever terms you want (Lyrics, Artist, Title, Album). This would be great in a lesson that compared modern day music to composers of the past. Students could take the idea of fluency and compare if artists of today set the text in similar ways to composers from other centuries. Alternatively, students could take lyrics from one another's favorite songs, and then write different music to the lyrics.

[|Classic Cat]

An index of about 6000 free classical music performances. You can choose texts from these pieces to begin with (reciting) in class, then listen to the classical setting on the text from this website.

__**Links to helpful websites**__
[|Audio recordings of famous speeches]

This website, provided by the History Channel, contains an index of scores of famous speeches given since the onset of audio recording. These recordings can be used as examples of effective, fluent speaking. A subsequent activity to this lesson could include the memorization and performance of all or part of one of these speeches.

[|Audio recordings of poetry]

The Academy of American Poets maintains this collection of audio recordings of poetry, some read by professional readers and/or the poets themselves. Rather than beginning the lesson with the activity of students writing their own poetry, try using one of these poems and eventually listening to the recording!

[|Word finding application]

Wonderful new application for finding words that you can't remember. You can put in portions of the word, or just random letters you know are in it, even letters that you know AREN'T in it. You can also search by meaning. A great vocabulary building tool, however, this could be helpful when writing lyrics to poetry.

[|Article on reading fluency]

A nice article on fluency, relating it to more than just music. Though it is a little younger than our lesson planned for, still holds applicable ideas.

[|Lesson on connections between music and poetry]

Wonderfully written lesson for music and fluency. Again, it is just a bit younger than the audience of our lesson, but it holds six 30 minute lessons for music and fluency. Also contains references to applicable text.

[|Wonderful article on music and literacy]

While it isn't a lesson, and it may be tough for younger student to pull the information out, this is a great article for teachers on the connections between music and literacy. It touches on singing multiple languages, Kodaly-inspired instruction, and pedagogical aspects of teaching different languages.