Playing With Pieces of the Schulwerk Betsy Kipperman betsyk.aosa@gmail.com Greater Cincinnati Orff Chapter - AOSA March 11, 2017 Piece #1: Erstes Spiel am Xylophon, Gunild Keetman Page 23 #44 (Kleine Kanon) Goals: Vocal (and mental, physical, etc.) warm up Using phrases of the piece, hum, use different vowel shapes, play with tempo and dynamics while the class learns the melody. Walk while singing to activate the body and connect with those around you. Try the canon. Welcome one and welcome all. It s Time to play. Let s have a ball so Shake a hand and give a smile let s make up our own style. Text by B. Kipperman Continue singing the song and exploring ways to play with the material: o Tempo o Dynamics o Key especially if this is used as a vocal warm up. This is helpful for ear training and relative pitch o Accompaniment options o Meter How else can you play with the piece? Piece #2: Rhythmische Ubung, Gunild Keetman page 19 #65 Goals: Find a jumping off point from a body percussion piece (in 6/8) Teach claps only. Class performs claps while teacher fills in steps. Class performs steps while teacher performs claps. Divide into two groups to perform each part. Teacher adds the pats. Rotate the parts between three groups. Perform entire piece. Determine the form of the piece. Play with variations on the form. Transfer to unpitched percussion instruments. After sharing small group work, have participants reflect on what they saw: What made them go ooh-aahh, what surprised them, what similarities or differences didthey notice between groups, etc. Share a what if? with each group. Using the what if s suggested and incorporating formation, movement, expression, etc, edit group work and perform again Continue exploring ways to play with the material.
Piece #3: Spielbuch fur Xylophone II, Gunild Keetman: page 13 #11 Part I Goals: Explore how accents can affect rhythm (and prepare a tricky section of a piece) Part II Goals: Use imagery to enhance technique, tone, and timbre at the barred instruments Part I: Play with shapes as sets of sound: Triangle Circle Square with four sides Until arriving at: Teach the transition section as a rhythm only. Part II: Form a circle around mallets. Pretend the mallets are paintbrushes. Everyone picks up a set of paintbrushes. Bring up the image of a Chinese ink painting and the kind of stroke used to draw those kinds of lines. Sing the melody. While singing melody, paint the phrases in the style allowed by the Chinese brush. Compare that style to George Seurat pointillism. Paint in that style. Try Jackson Pollack. Conduct the piece using different brushstroke styles. Have students conduct the class. After exploring different styles of conducting the melody, move to the barred instruments. Set up in La pentatonic on D. The melody starts on A and ends on D. Give class time to figure out how to play the melody. Teach the accompaniment. Play piece. Bring back the image of the different brushstrokes and see if that affects how the class plays the piece. Have accompaniment and melody players switch parts. Part III: Put the piece together. Add the transition section (shapes) to the painted melody. Using the rhythm determined by the shape progression invent a melody, learn the original melody, or keep the rhythm unpitched. Continue exploring ways to play with the material.
Piece #4 Music for Children Volume I (Margaret Murray ed) page111 #31 - Rondo Goals: Put into practice ideas offered in Gunild Keetman s Elementaria: pages 158-159(choreography and opportunities for improvisation both in movement and on instruments). Form analysis and its application to the music and the dance. Text for A section of the piece are the dance directions stated in Elementaria: Join hands in a circle and walk this way now, oh Join hands in a circle and now turn around. 2x Text for the pedal point transition sections: 1. Now we will go from one circle to two 2. Now we will go from two circles to four 3. Now we will go from four circles to one The main concept for this piece is the form. A-B-transition-A-C-transition-etc. Within each large section there are smaller elemental sections. The sections between the A sections can be taught either as written, simplified, or they could be improvised. Teach basic choreography as suggested in Elementaria. What else can be done with these suggestions in mind? Piece(s) #5: Music For Children Volume I (Margaret Murray ed) page 66 #14 & #6 Goals: Fit text to a rhythm and use rhythmic speech to enhance a dramatization of a story Movement warm ups to prepare for elements of the story of: The Five Chinese Brothers by Claire Huchet Bishop and Kurt Wiese ISBN #0-698-11357-8! Stretch (legs) lengthen! Tense/strong shapes and movements (iron neck)! Deep Breathing (hold breath)! Encircling (hold the sea) sway motion, waves, contained vs uncontained There are so many possibilities and models offered in Volume One s Rhythmic exercises section. In levels courses students are often asked to notate rhythms of text. Another exercise to try (suggested in this section of the book) is to apply a text to a given rhythm. This technique is so helpful when trying to accurately teach
difficult rhythms to your classes, but it is not so easy to do. Remember accents in normal speech patterns should be maintained within a set rhythm. Here are some rhythmic exercises from Volume one with text from the story we will share: Once the rhythms (and texts) are comfortable, don t feel you have to stop. Transferring these rhythms to pitched or unpitched instruments will help add some character to the.characters. If there is time and your group feels so inclined or inspired, try playing with some of the elements like we did in the warm-up this morning. What if you played it slower? In a different mode? More stacatto or legato? High octave or low octave? The possibilities go on and on. Using the ideas explored in the movement warm-up and the new pieces created by the groups, put the story together for an informal performance. Piece #6 Music For Children Volume II (Margaret Murray ed) #1 Sleep, Baby, Sleep Goals: SING! Independence of parts Imagine what your dream land tree looks like. Close your eyes and visualize the scene. Maybe you would like to draw, sculpt, or write about it. Hold your baby and rock it while you sing to it. Mood, ambiance, and visualization can take this piece to many places. This is also a great piece for teaching intervals and paraphony parallel melodies. The simple accompaniments enhance this beautiful melody. This piece has words, so it is meant to be sung. What would happen if all of the parts were performed vocally instead of on other instruments?
Discussion Points: 1. Many examples throughout the volumes and supplemental books use the same melodic idea but change the meter and/or change the accompaniment. For example Erstes Spiel page 8 #8 and #9 or Volume I Canon exercises page 91 # 1-3 are actually 1 and 1a, 2 and 2a, 3 and 3a. These examples provide a clear model of ways to play with the musical material. 2. There are many examples of pieces that switch parts. Part one plays part two in the second half of the piece and vice versa, as seen in the Spielbuch II piece we played and in many others. This is a model of everyone can and should learn all of the parts of the piece. 3. There are many examples of similar accompaniment patterns, melodic phrases, and rhythmic phrases within different pieces. This models elemental style. Learn small elements and build off of them to make learning new material easier and more accessible. Students learn the bones the raw material - and are allowed and encouraged to play with that material. This makes creating, composing, improvisation safe and accessible for students and teachers alike. Books referenced in this session: Bishop/Weise, The Five Chinese Brothers. New York: Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 1938. Keetman, Elementaria, translation Margaret Murray. London: Schott, 1974. Keetman, Orff Schulwerk, Erstes Spiel am Xylophon. Germany: Schott Keetman, Orff-Schulwerk, Rhythmische Ubung. Germany: Schott, 1970. Keetman, Orff Schulwerk, Spielbuch fur Xylophon II. Germany: Schott Orff/Keetman, Orff Schulwerk, Music for Children Vol. I and II, Margaret Murray Ed. England: Schott