Hymn Singing

This weekend I attended a church service in rural Kansas where my grandfather was minister of the Bergthal Mennonite Church in the 1950s. I love singing in a Mennonite community where bold four-part harmony comes easily and joyfully. I videoed the singing with the idea that I would use it as a soundtrack for a slideshow from the church service.

It reminded me of a paper I wrote for my anthropology class in college about the role of singing in three kinds of religious services: Appalachian, Kansas Baptist, and Mennonite. I wonder if I can find that paper and reread it to see what I think now....

Last Week of General Music

This is the last week of the school year for me. The money has run out, and even though there is still another month of school for the CUSD, music is ending. I am not at all sad since at this time of year, students are not coming to music with their full brains engaged. (This is an understatement.)

I have always tried to do different and fun things in the final weeks of music class, but my attempts to involve students in music-making fail. I have finally remembered this while I lesson plan, and this week we are watching movies! Well, you know, good movies. With the upper graders we watched The Sorcerer's Apprentice section of Fantasia and I had the kids write about various sections of the 10-minute video. The second-graders watched The Dance of the Hours and laughed and laughed.

The vast majority of the kids have not seen this movie, so it was fun to be able to introduce a part of it to them. We told one of the older classes that we couldn't show them the whole movie because some parts are "inappropriate" (I showed it to my own kids when they were young, so I don't find anything objectionable in it, but maybe some parents wouldn't want me to show them the sort-of nudity or the wine-making by Bacchus.). As soon as they heard there might be racy parts, they all wanted to know the name of the movie so they could go rent it.....