Symphony of Color Art Contest

Transcription

1 Symphony of Color Art Contest Presented in cooperation with Teacher s Guide

2 Table of Contents Welcome Page 1 How to Use This Guide Page 2 The Artist s Toolbox Page 2 Edvard Grieg About the composer Page 3 About Peer Gynt Page 4 About Norwegian Dance No. 3, Op. 35 Page 5 Activities Page 6 National & State Education Standards Page 6 About the Symphony of Color Art Contest Contest Regulations Page 7 Selection Guidlines Page 7 Important Dates Page 8 Artwork Inventory Form Page 9 Symphony of Color Identification Form Page 10 Dear Art Educator: Thank you for your interest in the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra s Symphony of Color Art Contest. We are delighted that you will be participating this year and anxiously await the always inspiring art to come. The musical selections for this year s contest will take your students on a journey to the frigid shores of Norway to explore the history of Norweigian folktales, dancing, and literature. Both of Edvard Grieg s pieces for this years contest - In the Hall of the Mountain King from Peer Gynt and the Norweigian Dance No. 3, Op vividly evoke Norweigian folk life during the nineteenth century. We believe that the arts in all their forms are essential to a complete education. We further believe that the arts are a necessary and equal part of the total school curriculum and have produced this guide with those beliefs as our guiding principle. Students will receive the maximum benefit from their contest experience if the abundant connections between music and the other parts of the curriculum are emphasized. We hope you will take full advantage of this guide and recordings so your students can, in turn, be knowledgeable and eager participants in the Symphony of Color contest. If you have questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at (812) , ext 316, or at bonderdonk@evansvillephilharmonic.org. Good luck! Sincerely, Brian Onderdonk The Alice May Director of Education & Community Programs 1

3 How to Use This Guide 1. Teacher preparation: Read all materials thoroughly. 2. Download Grieg s In the Hall of the Mountain King from Peer Gynt and the Norwegian Dance No. 3, Op. 35 from AABK6f36pRloPDPKUhKzcbana?dl=0 and have students listen to the pieces. To download, simply follow the link above and save the mp3s to your computer. 3. Complete the Discussion Activities (page 6). 4. Introduce the class to the background resource information (pages 3-5). 5. Listen to the musical pieces again. 6. Begin artwork. Since the competition emphasizes the work and interpretation of the individual, take care not to suggest ideas that might not oridinarily occur to the students on their own. 7. Have students write a short essay on the Identification Form (provided on page 7 of this Guide) to accompany art entries. This can be dictated to a teacher/aide depending on the age of the student. 8. After the works are completed, schools should select ten pictures, preferably two from each grade level (1-5) to represent your school as entrants in the contest. You may send as many pictures as you like For Exhibition Only. (PreK and Kindergarten entries may be submitted for exhibition only). Only those pictures you select as entrants will be entered into the contest. The Artist s Toolbox Artists need many things to create a work of art: paintbrushes, paint, pencils, paper, erasers, crayons and hundreds of more things. Composers (people who write music) are also artists, but instead of painting a picture that can be seen, they paint a picture you can hear. Composers need several things that visual artists also use: pencils, erasers, paper and even colored pencils! Some composers write music on a computer just like how some visual artists use a computer to create their works of art. That s not the only thing they have in common, however. Composers and visual artists both need something incredibly important: inspiration. Sometimes a story is an inspiration such as Rimsky-Korsakov s orchestral piece Sheherazade and Edouard Frédéric Wilhelm Richter s painting Sheherazade (left). Sometimes composers are inspired by art like in the case of Rachmaninoff s piece Isle of the Dead which was based on a work by Arnold Bocklin of the same name (right). Sometimes artists are inspired by music and musicians like in the case of Andy Warhol s portraits of Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones (left). For this contest, your artists will be inspired by music that are in turn insired by folk legends and dancing of Norway. 2

4 Edvard Grieg pronounced ED vard GrEEg About the Composer Facts First composer to draw international attention to Norwegian music. Born on June 15, 1843 and died on September 4, Heavily influenced by Norwegian folk legends and dancing. Felt In the Hall of the Mountain King was among his worst compositions. It is now considered to be among his most famous and well-loved pieces. Composer Edvard Grieg, the icon of Norwegian music, left his home in Bergen, Norway to study at the conservatory in Leipzig. There he began his formal musical education under the auspices of Ignaz Moscheles (piano) and Carl Reinecke (composition). While in school, the young composer saw the premiere of his first work, his String Quartet in D minor, performed in Karlshamn, Sweden. Despite being diagnosed with a form of tuberculosis, which left him with only one functioning lung, Grieg graduated from the conservatory in The composer had an intense desire to develop a national style of composition, but recognized the importance of becoming well versed in the work of the European masters, and consequently relocated to Copenhagen, studying with Niels Gade. He was thus able to remain in Scandanavia, while working in a thriving cultural center. In 1867 against his family s better judgment, Grieg married his cousin Nina Hagerup, a talented pianist, but whose vocal abilities enchanted the composer even more. Shortly after their wedding, the couple moved to Oslo, where Grieg supported them by teaching (left) Peer Gynt before the Mountain King (right) Norweigian folk dancers piano and conducting. He and his wife traveled extensively throughout Europe and it was during a period of time spent in Denmark, the composer wrote his landmark opus, the Piano Concerto in A minor. The premiere was given in 1869, with Edmund Neupert as the soloist. The piece was received with an enthusiasm that would attach itself to the composer s reputation for the remainder of his career. Grieg admired his literary contemporaries and forged a productive partnership with Bjötjerne Björnson, playwright and poet, with whom he staged performances of such works as Before a Southern Convert, and Bergliot. While Björnson struggled with his output, Grieg met and befriended Henrik Ibsen. The forthcoming collaboration would prove significant for both, as Grieg would supply incidental music to Ibsen s Peer Gynt. The premiere was performed to critical acclaim and eventually led to Grieg s scoring of Peer Gynt into Suites 1 and 2 (1888 and 1893 respectively). 3

5 As a result of the success of Peer Gynt, Grieg enjoyed tremendous celebrity and continued to travel extensively, often meeting internationally renowned composers such as Tchaikovsky, Brahms, and Liszt, among others. In addition to a grant he was awarded in 1874, Grieg was able to earn the majority of his money by adhering to a vigorous schedule of recital tours. He served briefly as the music director of the Bergen Symphony Orchestra, and from , held the same position at the Bergen Harmonien. In 1885, Grieg and his wife relocated once again, this time to his native Bergen, Norway, where he built their celebrated home, Troldhaugen. (top) Peer Gynt meets the Troll princess Grieg died of chronic fatigue, with much credit given to his lifelong health problems, in his hometown of Bergen. Norway s most famous composer, dedicated his career to the pursuit of a national sound. He wrote in the Romantic tradition with, in his own words, the determination to create a national form of music, which could give the Norwegian people an identity. About Peer Gynt Suites Nos. 1 and 2 The great Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen ( ) accomplished the near impossible in his verse drama Peer Gynt (1867): he chose for his protagonist a man who was completely devoid of any positive qualities and made us care for that man deeply by the end of the play. Peer, a Norwegian peasant lad, is a notorious liar and swindler who betrays the love of his life and all his friends. But Ibsen showed how earnestly this unsavory character had struggled all his life to make sense of human destiny, and made this quest the focus of his play. Like Goethe s Faust, Peer goes from one plane of experience to the next: his path leads him, in turn, to the kingdom of the Trolls, to America, and the North African desert, before he finds his way back to the saintly Solveig, who has spent her entire life waiting for him patiently in the Norwegian mountains. One of the things that make Peer Gynt unique is its mixture of Norwegian local color and universal philosophy. When Edvard Grieg was asked to write the incidental music for the play s first production, he complained that it was the most unmusical of subjects. Evidently, he had some difficulty capturing the philosophical side of the drama. The folkloristic element, on the other hand, positively cried out for musical treatment, and here Grieg was in his element. The incidental music to Peer Gynt strengthened his reputation as the greatest composer in the country, and at the same time, it helped establish Ibsen s masterpiece on the international stage. Grieg extracted two suites from Peer Gynt. Each suite is in four movements. The first of his two suites ends with one of Grieg s most popular melodies, In the Hall of the Mountain King. Peer has met a woman clad in green who has taken him to the palace of her father, the King of the Trolls. Peer almost becomes a Troll himself, and almost accepts the kingdom and the hand of the Troll princess. He backs out at the last minute, however, frightened at the prospect of having to give up his human identity. The grotesque music of the mountain people becomes more and more menacing as it grows in volume. At the end of the movement, Peer is nearly killed by the angry Trolls. 4

6 About Norweigian Dance No. 3, Op. 35 The Norwegian Dances were first composed in 1881 for piano duet, and are based on tunes from a huge collection of folk music called Mountain melodies old and new made by Ludwig Mathias Lindeman ( ) which Grieg encountered when he was in his twenties. Later, Grieg orchestrated them with the intention of filling in some sections of Peer Gynt necessitated by the technical demands of Ibsen s technically complicated drama and the limitations of stage machinery. The dances convey the rhythmic vitality and charm of Norwegian folk melodies. The theme of one of them, the Allegro tranquillo, became the basis of the song Freddy and his fiddle in Song of Norway, a musical written in 1944 by Robert Wright and George Forrest and adapted from the music of Grieg. 5

7 Activities Discussion/Listening Activity: What does Grieg do musically in In the Hall of the Mountain King to describe the growing anger of the trolls toward Peer Gynt? What instruments do you hear and how do they make you imagine the fictional scene in your head? Discussion/Listening Activity: In the Norwegian Dance No. 3 what kind of moves do you think real dancers would perform if dancing to the first section of this piece? What about in the second section? Discussion Activity: What are the differences between creating artwork for a piece that follows a set story (like In the Hall of the Mountain King versus one that doesn t (like Norwegian Dance No. 3)? What are your personal reasons for wanting to create art for one or the other? (left) Peer Gynt escaping the Mountain King s lair (right) Traditional Norwegian dancers National Standards Music Listening to, analyzing and describing music. Evaluating music and music performances. Understanding relationships between music, the other arts and disciplines outside the arts. Understanding music in relation to history and culture. Art Understanding the visual arts in relation to history and cultures. Reflecting upon and assesing the characteristics and merits of their work and the work of others. Making connections between visual arts and other disciplines. Indiana State Standards Music Responding To Music: Listening to, analyzing and describing music. Responding To Music: Evaluating music and music performances. Responding To Music: Understanding relationships between music, the other arts and disciplines outside the arts. Responding To Music: Understanding music in relation to history and culture. Creating Art Students observe, select and utilize a range of subject matter, symbols, and ideas in their work. Students understand and apply elements and principles of design effectively in their work. Students develop and apply skills using a variety of two-dimensional and three-dimensional media, tools and processes to create works that communicate personal meaning. Students reflect on, revise, and refine work using problem solving and critical thinking skills. 6

8 Contest Regulations Entries: All entries must be original work of an individual student. Media: Any two or three dimensional arts media, including paint, crayon, pencil, marker, pastels, or collage is acceptable. No chalk, please. Size & Mounting: Finished artwork must be no larger than 24 x 36. Please spray the artwork with a fixative. No lamination. Artwork must be mounted on white, lightweight, poster board. Identification of Artwork: Front: No inscriptions on the mounting or artwork. Back: Affix one completed identification form to the back of each entry. Please type or print information clearly. Include the inventory form listing all entries. The identification forms and the inventory form must have the same information. Complete an inventory form for each school for which you are submitting art. Judging: The finalists art will be judged by representatives of the of the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra, the Evansville Museum of Arts, History and Science, and the Koch Family Children s Museum of Evansville. Contest winners will be announced in March, Prizes: One winner will be chosen from each grade level (1-5). Four of these winners will receive a $50 cash prize. One winner will receive a Grand Prize of $100 cash. In addition to the grade level awards, three special award recipients will be selected. All winners will receive 2 tickets to the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra s Classics concert, St. Patrick s Day Celebration, on March 17th, as well as the Evansville Philharmonic Youth Orchestras Spring Concert on April 15, Prizes will be awarded on stage during the Philharmonic concert on March 17, Selection Guidelines How well does the artwork capture the mood of the music? In artwork that is realistic, as opposed to abstract, how well has the theme of the music been portrayed? While this element is secondary to the actual musical interpretation, it should be considered when appropriate. Use of color values and intensities is a very important consideration. In general, children make good use of color as a means of expression, and this is encouraged. However, especially with some older children, pencil and ink entries can also be very effective. Do not automatically dismiss a work lacking color but capturing individuality, style and expression. We think of art as a personal statement or expression, not only to the interpreter, but also to the senses of the beholder. Please do not hesitate to send us a piece with which you personally identify, even if not all of the above criteria apply. 7

9 Important Dates Art Submission Deadline: March 2, 2018 Art Exhibition at cmoe: March 5-14, 2018 Performance Dates: March 15-16, 2018 Art will be shown at the Evansville Philharmonic s Annual Helen McKinney Young People s Concerts Award Presentation: March 17, 2018 On stage during the Evansville Philharmonic s Classics Concert, St. Patrick s Day Celebration - 7:00 p.m. Please use enclosed forms when submitting artwork 8

10 Artwork Inventory Form Please type or print clearly. School Name Teacher/Contact Title Phone ( ) School Address City State Zip Student Artwork Inventory 1. Student Name Grade 2. Student Name Grade 3. Student Name Grade 4. Student Name Grade 5. Student Name Grade 6. Student Name Grade 7. Student Name Grade 8. Student Name Grade 9. Student Name Grade 10. Student Name Grade

11 Symphony of Color Identification Form Student Name Grade Age Teacher Name School About my work: (Students may dictate thoughts to teachers to record below.) AFFIX THIS FORM TO THE BACK OF EACH ART ENTRY 10