Cultural Ireland -Discovery of Music & Sound - Module 3: Our Musical Schools

Module 3: 'Our Musical School'

In this module, the children develop a musical composition inspired by a story "The Children of Lir", an old Irish legend specially written and performed for the program by Northern Ireland writer and actress Marilyn McLaughlin.

The aim of this Module is to allow the children to:

reinforce the creative process, musical expression, listening and response skills introduced in the previous modules
explore and discover different ways of responding in music and sound to the story
reinforce and further develop the collaborative skills introduced in the previous modules: group and class work and now working with 3 jurisdictions on a composition.
develop enough aesthetic skill in a particular forms (sound animation/chant/music) in order to adapt the story into a group composition set to a common time signature

There are 6 exercises n this Module. Each exercise should be completed within the same session but it is up to the teacher to decide on the individual exercise duration.

In Exercise 1 "Us" each group combines the resources gathered in Module 1 to create an orchestra of body/voice, natural and musical sounds.

In Exercise 2 "Our Environment", the children explore and record sounds from various environments nearby (e.g., school, park, field, sea-side).

In Exercises 1-3, the children will listen to the story to establish the emotions and feelings, events, places and characters. They will then interpret the verbal story as a musical composition. To facilitate this work the children will experience how a music composer interpreted a story in music 'Ireland -A Cultural Journey' by listening and reading his notes on the program web site
In Exercise 3 "Listen to Us", the children combine all the music, sound animations and environmental sounds they have collected and compose a final group composition as a class.

From Exercise 3 onwards, the children in each of the three jurisdictions will concentrate on one form for the final composition:
At the end of the Module, the schools are in video conference with each other. The teacher selects sample groups to perform their compositions for the other schools and they then discuss their experiences.

Northern Ireland will concentrate on the music,
Republic of Ireland on the sound animations
USA schools on the chant.

A composition director (one of the teachers) will be nominated in each jurisdiction to arrange meetings between the schools, either via local video conferencing or meeting at a central location, to discuss and direct the composition's development. The time signature for the final composition will be set by the music conductor, Ronan Doherty from Northern Ireland, in consultation with all the schools.

There will be a Video Conference at the end of each stage of exercises 4-6 to discuss and establish the outcome from each jurisdiction.

A working score will be in circulation between the 3 composition directors via e-mail as the composition develops. On-going recordings of the 3 parts should be uploaded to this web site in the Music and Sound Exchange.

The 'Children of Lir' is a tale of magic, love, terror, jealousy, pain, sadness, friendship and freedom. Sam Burnside, Director of the Verbal Arts Centre in Derry in Northern Ireland, has also written a poem inspired by the story which he is making available to the program as a secondary inspiration for the teachers and children

Teacher Download

Module 3 exercises (To Print)
Module 3 exercises with resources(To Print)

back to top