Author Description

Portraits in Music is a collection of background material to be used in conjunction with 15 pieces of music for listening. While the music has been chosen carefully for its liveliness and general appeal, the depth of treatment, which it will receive will depend on the needs and abilities of the class. Each piece is covered in units of 3-5 pages containing background information drawn from original sources, songs to sing with guitar accompaniments, notes on composers, and their periods, suggestions for follow-up work, useful information about forms, styles, and instruments, numerous illustrations, and a quiz. In general, the pieces illustrate the theme that people, places, and events have been a source of musical inspiration to many great the scoundrel character of Till Eulenspiegel, the romance of Scotland, the tragic journey of Captain Scott to the South Pole. Portraits in Music attempts to remove some of the traditional barriers which frequently exist between music and other subject areas of the curriculum in the secondary school such as visual arts, drama, literature, poetry, and social studies. Some of the many pieces include the Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi, Sinfonia Antartica by Ralph Vaughan Williams, The Execution of Stepan Razin by Dmitri Shostakovich, Romeo and Juliet by Peter Llich Tchaikovsky, Academic Festival Overture by Johannes Brahms, Enigma Variations by Edward Elgar, Billy the Kid by Aaron Copland, Portmouth Point by William Walton, An American in Paris by George Gershwin, and Washington’s Birthday by Charles Ives.