Composing & Performing 16-Beat Rhythms | MMB Music

Overview

In his introduction to Gunild Keetman’s Elementaria, Werner Thomas writes about Orff-Schulwerk as an approach that allows for daily music making while teaching the elements of music. These elements—rhythm, melody, harmony, texture, and form—combine to form the fundamentals of all music composition.

In the Schulwerk, the means to composition most often begins with speech. The timeless quality of the traditional English nursery rhyme, “Wash the Dishes, Wipe the Dishes,” provides substantial foundational rhythmic material in an imaginative, playful, and poetic setting. Our initiation of this lesson will focus on the rhythmic materials of beat, divided beat, and rest in duple meter. Different tea names, an idea extracted from the English rhyme, will function as rhythmic building bricks. These short units of rhythm can be combined by students to create successful rhythmic compositions.

The imaginative quality of the text contributes the necessary material for an introduction combining movement and choral speech. Students will enjoy creating the “three wishes” from the English verse. Again, words and combinations of these words enhance student creativity in the realms of the Schulwerk.

The melodic and harmonic material is extracted from Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman’s Music for Children, Volume I (Murray Edition). A variation of the text makes the pentatonic melody easily mastered by students. Ostinati accompaniments provide a playful texture that enhances the quality of the text and the student creations. Through these experiences, rhythmic reading and notation easily find their place in the classroom.

Movement, speech, composition, and song provide students with necessary material for concrete music learning and creating. Synthesizing these materials will provide an aesthetic experience that is joyful and meaningful to teacher and students, while the fundamentals of music are utilized. These fundamentals are presented in new and varied forms through the media of movement, choral speech work, instruments, and song. As with any Schulwerk experience, the possibilities are fueled by the imaginations of all involved.

Objectives

Rhythm: Students will identify, compose, read, and perform 16 beat rhythms containing quarter notes, eighth notes, and quarter rests.

Melody: Students will compose and perform melodies using the G Pentatonic scale.

Harmony: Students will accompany themselves using a drone bass and a broken bordun.

Texture: Students will perform pieces with two ostinati accompaniments.

Form: Students will identify and perform an A B A B1 phrase form. Students will identify and construct an overarching form that includes introduction, rondo, and coda.

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