Classical Music for Halloween

1
Classical Music for Halloween

• Sit back, fasten your seat belt, and get ready
  for the ride. We are going to discover motives
  and themes in classical music which you will be
  able to recognize by sight and sound when we are
  finished.

\\Ohs_s\staff\OHSBaker\halloween music.xbk
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Little do you know, but the music that you
usually enjoy getting scared to has been written
and performed for over a hundred years, and some
of it has been for over 250 hundred years, and
yes, by those wigged, weirdly dressed, and very
dead men.
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List the characteristics of the music that have
the effect of increasing your pulse, seeping
frightening thoughts into your head, and making
you cry for mommy.
act 1
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Songs we will be experiencing will be
Night on Bald Mountain (1830) The Hall of the Mou
ntain King (1876) Danse Macabre (1874) Tocatta
and Fugue in D minor (1703) Carmen Burana (1937
) The Sorcerers Apprentice (1897) March to the
Scaffold
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Night on Bald Mountain Mussorgsky's starting-
point was the ancient Russian legend of a
witches' sabbath taking place on St Johns Knight
on Mount Triglay, near Kiev. The legend tells of
nocturnal revels, led by the demon Chernobog
(often depicted as a black goat), which only come
to an end with the break of day.
Listen for the themes of good and evil. What
instruments create the good and evil forces?
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In the Hall of the Mountain King
Story is of a young egomaniac which gets caught
in TROLL country and is forced to marry the Troll
princess. Listen to the music to see if he is
happy about this, and tell with musical terms how
you know.
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March to the Scaffold Camille Saint-Saen     Con
vinced that his love is spurned, the artist
poisons himself with opium. The dose of narcotic,
while too weak to cause his death, plunges him
into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest
of visions. He dreams that he has killed his
beloved, that he is condemned, led to the
scaffold and is witnessing his own execution. The
procession advances to the sound of a march that
is sometimes sombre and wild, and sometimes
brilliant and solemn, in which a dull sound of
heavy footsteps follows without transition the
loudest outbursts. At the end of the march, the
first four bars of the idée fixe reappear like a
final thought of love interrupted by the fatal
blow.
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When you listen to this tone poem, what it is
that causes the skeletons to quit dancing madly?
ARTSEDGE Monsters
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Assessment

• Students will create a powerpoint assignment
  about a selection of Classical music appropriate
  for Halloween.
  

\\OHS_S\STAFF\OHSBAKER\Halloween Music Powerpoint
project.doc