A moderated, joining-in concert
Outreach program for children aged 7 to 11
Since March 2007 the Arnold Schönberg Center Vienna has been offering a music appreciation class so that school children from seven to eleven years of age might have a musical encounter with the life and work of Arnold Schönberg. The concert pedagogue and music mediator Hanne Muthspiel- Payer as well as the pianist and piano teacher Elisabeth Aigner- Monarth developed a concept for a colorful, 90 minute expedition through Schönberg’s life and creative work, with live music, active participation, singing, workshop and experimentation.
In the center is, of course, the composer, who is searched for at the beginning of the concert by the tennis-playing moderator because she wants to have a tennis match with him. Life-size figures of Schönberg at approximately the same age as these young concert-goers and as an adult intensify the experience. The pianist endows Schönberg with her voice and slips into the role of “Mr. Schönberg” for the duration of the concert. Pupils leaf through Schönberg’s family album and test out his very own invention of a notation device, in order to be able to note down the very same twelve-tone row that they had just sung in chorus. A lot of discussion arises concerning the Schönberg portrait they have been shown: Why is his face so blue?
Excerpts from different piano works (Piano Piece of 1894, op. 11 / 1, op. 25 / Musette) are played live by the pianist (“Mr. Schönberg”) in a concert-like atmosphere, while on a screen Wassily Kandinsky’s “Impression III,” inspired by Schönbergs music, can be seen.
The workshop has an important function. Here the twelvetone technique is explained by way of grouping the pupils into the notes of a piano. On the floor there is a model of a set of giant-sized piano keys and each child stands on one key which can be made to sound by means of a sound pipe: chromatically up and down, then in a more pre-determined manner – and soon a row has been created. At first everything is done slowly, and so that the other pupils don’t get bored, they walk through a large “mirrored gate” where, on another set of giant keys, they copy the musical image of their classmates on the other side. Thus the children by themselves have played the four basic forms of the twelve-tone row and completed them.
Thereafter the pupils improvise some outer space music with these tonal materials: stars twinkle by means of twelve chro matic sound bells to the space music of the piano, and the other children, who have formed pairs, pantomime the stars, which react to and mirror the various changing patterns of sound. In order that they also gain an impression of Arnold Schönberg as a father who tells his children fairy tales, Schönberg’s fairy tale “The Princess,” in words and pictures, is also on the program. This event is drawing to a close, but you still can hear the children in the halls of the Arnold Schönberg Center humming “Funiculì-Funiculà,” the Italian song arranged by Schönberg.
Hanne Muthspiel-Payer und Elisabeth Aigner-Monarth
Dates:
12, 17 and 18 June 2013
9.00 am and 10.45 am
Workshop language: German
Registration: Arnold Schönberg Center: Telefon (01) 712 18 88
Feedback:
»Mein Dank gilt ganz besonders Hanne Muthspiel-Payer und ihrer Kollegin
Elisabeth Aigner Monarth.
Ich habe mit meiner Klasse am 15. Jänner Ihr Haus besucht. Wie den Kindern
das Leben, die Musik Schönbergs nahe gebracht wurde, bedarf eines besonderen
Lobes. Abwechslungsreich, anschaulich, einfühlsam und mit großem Geschick
haben die beiden Damen das Interesse der Zehnjährigen geweckt. Danke für
diese schöne Einführung!«
Mit lieben Grüßen, empfehle Sie gerne weiter
Mag. Annemarie Zwinz, VS Diesterweggasse 30, 1140 Wien
Cooperation Arnold Schönberg Center and Stadtschulrat für Wien
Sponsored by Stadt Wien/Magistratsabteilung 13 »Bildung und außerschulische Jugendbetreuung«
Sponsored by Avenir Foundation
Download: Funiculi-Funicula