Friday, September 30, 2011

If It Ain't Baroque...

it's less likely to involve a harpsichord.  And that - in our opinion - is not necessarily a bad thing.

This was another week of just letting our music study slide.  We finished the notepages for the Baroque period, and listened to some of a CD of Antonio Scarlatti's toccattas.

The truth is - I wasn't a fan.  I don't remember disliking harpsichord music so heartily in the past, but this entire CD was harpsichord and I was SOOOOOOOOOO over it by just a couple minutes in.  LOL  Kids were no more impressed than I, so we cut the listening session pretty short and did some discussion instead.  How is the harpsichord different from our modern piano? (strings are plucked rather than struck with a hammer) How is it similar?  (same type of keyboard)  We talked about how the inability of the harpsichord to sustain notes meant that composers would embellish every line in order to maintain sound.  Our modern ears are not accustomed to that, so it sounds "busy" to us.  Just the harpsichord itself sounds strange to our ears.  I guess the discussion was productive, even if it was only a few minutes long.

Note to self: make sure the Bach we listen to next week is NOT harpsichord music.  It will be much better received that way. ;-)

I also was a slacker with Kennady's piano lessons this week.  We played a little, but it didn't get a lot of attention because of my family being here.

This post is linked at ~a teaching heart~ where we are keeping each other accountable for making time for music in our homeschooling!

a teaching heart

3 comments:

Stefanie said...

Bwaaa haaa haa!! I've been using that saying for weeks since we've been studying Baroque composers. Great minds...lol

I think Mackenzie is tired of me saying it over and over. I don't understand why?? Bummer for her because we've just started this period. Ha!

Julie Coney said...

every time i hear the word Baroque.... all I see is the candlestick from Beauty and the Beast...haha
Have a great week!

» Reading Aloud Challenge: October 7th Homeschool Coffee Break said...

[...] study in A Young Scholar’s Guide to the Composers.  We covered Baroque Music (posts here and here) and this week we studied Antonio [...]

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