Summary

In this lesson, students will learn about the characteristics of Baroque music, exploring in depth a masterpiece of the era - the 2nd movement from the Orchestral suite No. 3 by Johann Sebastian Bach, also known as 'The Air on the G String'. The class will hear different versions of the piece and discuss its popularity. Students will learn the characteristic movements of the Baroque dance suite and get to know how Baroque polyphony works, exploring the relations of different instrumental lines of the piece.

_{The timing and pacing of the exercises in this lesson plan example are approximate and will differ depending on your students' skill level. If the pace of this lesson plan is too fast for you, divide it into several lessons. If the pace of this lesson plan is too slow for you, explore the 'Beyond the lesson' chapter at the end of this lesson plan for additional activities.}

⏰ Time: 60 min

🎓 Grades: 5-12

🎯 Objective(s): As a result of this lesson students will be able to...

• Describe the characteristics of Baroque music and other art forms in general;
• Describe the instrumentation and mood of a given piece;
• Follow different instrumental parts of a given piece and describe their relationship;
• Read the manuscript of a given piece.

💡 Required Prior Knowledge and Skills:

• Basic notation;
• Basic rhythm.
• Musical instruments.

💻 Materials:

• Solfeg.io web app best used with Chrome browser
• Projector or computer and access to Wi-Fi

Piece suggestions:

Inspiration

🕐 10 min - Air on the air

-Play Johann Sebastian Bach's Air from Orchestral suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068 on Solfeg.io web app with muting the synth and rhythm lines (find them in Controls - Volume).

-Discuss the piece:

• Have you heard this piece before?

It has been cited in other songs, used in films and adverts. Here are some examples (you can play excerpts from them, if you wish):

'A Whiter Shade of Pale' by Procol Harum, a rock song from the 1960s;

'Everything's Gonna Be Alright' by Sweetbox, a hip-hop song from the 1990s;

French pianist Jacques Loussier did a jazz interpretation of the piece;

Film composer Hugo Montenegro used the piece in his 'Love Theme' in the movie 'The Godfather';

The piece was interpreted on a Moog synthesizer by the American electronic music composer Walter (later Wendy) Carlos and included in the groundbreaking album 'Switched-On Bach' (1968).

• How would you describe the mood of the piece? (Such adjectives could be used as nostalgic, longing, wistful, calm, moving, airy, graceful, elegant, subtle, delicate etc.)

• What instruments are played in this piece? (Violin, viola, cello, double bass, harpsichord).

Warm-Up

🕐 15 min - What's baroque about Baroque?

-Bach's Orchestral suite No. 3 and thus its 2nd movement - the air we just heard - was written around 1731, so almost 300 years ago.

-Probably at least some of the students will have heard the piece somewhere before and there are different versions and interpretations of the piece made in different times, so you could assume it's popular. Discuss it with the class!

• What makes one musical piece more popular than others?
• Why, in your opinion, this piece from 300 years ago is still remembered and liked while some pop songs that were in the top of the charts only a few years ago are forgotten?

-The Air could be considered the most famous piece from the Baroque era.

• Talk about Baroque, its timeframe and the characteristics of art in this era. Some facts you can choose to mention:

An era in the Western art; a style of architecture, music, painting, sculpture and other arts.

Its time frame is usually considered from 1600 until 1750.

The word 'baroque' derived from the Italian word 'barocco', used during the Middle Ages by philosophers to describe an obstacle in logic and later came to denote anything absurdly complex. Another possible source of the word is the Portuguese word 'barroco' which means a flawed or imperfectly shaped pearl.

In general, the baroque art is characterized by complexity, the desire to evoke certain emotional states, dynamism, movement, tension, grandeur and sharp contrasts.

Mention the most famous composers of the Baroque era, for example, George Friedrich Handel, Antonio Vivaldi, Henry Purcell, Domenico Scarlatti, Barbara Strozzi etc. And of course, Johann Sebastian Bach!

‍

-The piece is composed by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750) - a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist and violinist.

• The most celebrated member of a large family of north German musicians.
• Bach worked as a musician at different churches and courts and as a musical director and choirmaster at one of the oldest schools in the world - St. Thomas in th German city of Leipzig.
• He has composed more than 1000 works and is the author of masterpieces in every major Baroque musical genre except opera: sonatas, concertos, suites and cantatas.
• Bach wasn't an appreciated composer during his lifetime, he was considered 'outdated'.
• Bach was married twice and had 20 children.
• Mark that the year Bach died corresponds to the end of the Baroque era.

Practice

🕐 15 min - Exercise 1 - Explore the Baroque dance suite

• Divide the class into five groups.
• Find a manuscript score of Bach's Orchestral suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068 in public domain! (for example, here)
• Give each group a manuscript score of a movement from the suite (Overture, Air, Gavotte, Bouree, Gigue).
• Each group has a look at their score and tries to find an answer to these questions (for the last two of these, they might have to look it up on the internet

What instruments play in this movement?

What time signature is the movement in?

How long is the movement (how many pages)?

What does the name of the movement mean?

How would you describe the character and the mood of this movement?

• Explain any unclear or foreign terms students encounter.
• Each group presents their findings to the class. Do it in the order of movements of the suite!

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🕐 15 min - Exercise 2 - The Air under the microscope

-As you might have noticed in the previous exercise, Air is quite a contrast to the other movements (be reminded of contrasts as a characteristic of Baroque art!).

• Air is the only movement where only string instruments play (two violin parts, viola and bass) - other movements feature oboes, trumpets and timpani too.
• It is the shortest of all movements (only 18 measures!).
• Even though the Orchestral suite is based on the form of dance suite, Air is not a dance - it's an English term for 'aria' which normally signifies a lyrical piece for a solo voice, also used to mean 'melody', 'tune' or 'song'.

Arias are most commonly associated with opera (a drama in which the actors sing throughout), a musical genre which developed during the Baroque era.

‍

• Open 'The Air on the G String' by Johann Sebastian Bach in Solfeg.io player and solo the bass track (under the menu 'Controls' - 'Volume).
• Listen to the bass line of the A part and discuss its characteristics.

It's an example of 'walking bass' (In Baroque music, a term used informally for a bass line that moves steadily and continuously in contrasting (usually longer) note values to those in the upper part or parts. - Grove Music Online)

If you follow the notation, you'll see that it moves in steps of a scale interspersed with octave leaps.

The bass line gives the sense of perpetual movement to Air. Remember that dynamism, movement and tension is characteristic to the Baroque art in general.

In the original score, the bass line is marked as 'basso continuo' - it's an instrumental line, over which the player improvises a chordal accompaniment (in the video you watched earlier, it was done on harpsichord).

• Now, unmute the 1st violin part and listen how it sounds together with the bass.
• As the piece unfolds, unmute the parts of the 2nd violin and viola.

These are marked as 'ripieno' in the score, meaning they fulfill the role of harmonic 'stuffing' or ripieno in Italian.

Explain to students how polyphony works in this piece and how the lines of simultaneous independent melodies interact - point the students' attention to the melodies in violin and viola parts, played during the long notes of the 1st violin part.

• Explain where the name 'The Air on the G String' originates from.

Almost 150 years after Bach's Orchestral suite No. 3 was written, the violinist August Wilhelm arranged its 2nd movement for violin and piano. He changed the key of the piece so that it could be played on one string - the lowest, also called G string - of the violin.

• Time to hear another arrangement of the piece: unmute all the tracks, including the synth and rhythm lines!
• After listening, ask your students:

What was different about this arrangement?

Which instruments did you hear?

How did you like it?

Reflection

🕐 5 min - Discussion

• How does the mood of the piece change when the synth and rhythm part is added?
• If you did an arrangement of this Air, how would it be different from the original?

Beyond the Lesson

Challenge students to go beyond the lesson by...

• Listening to another Baroque masterpiece which can be found in the Song Library: 'Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 (3rd Movement) by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Visual presentation