LSO Children’s Concert Lesson Plan

Overture from Don Giovanni Created: Matthew Eschliman

Junior Music Education Major Doane College

Background of piece for instructor: The Overture to “Don Giovanni” is the first piece of music in the Opera “Don Giovanni.” The Overture foreshadows all the themes to come in the opera. Don Giovanni is based on the italian legends surrounding Don Juan, a fictional Libertine and Seducer. The opera is considered to be an Opera Buffa, a blending of serious and comedic styles. The overture begins with a dark and heavy cadence in D minor and resolves to a lighthearted and lilting cadence in D Major. The orchestration for the overture includes two flutes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, three trombones, violins, violas, cellos, and double bass. This opera, premiered in 1787 and is considered to be one Mozart’s greatest operatic contributions to music and is a mainstay of many opera companies around the world. Learning Focus Concepts: Students will recognize different instrument timbres i.e. winds and strings in the piece. Learning Outcomes for this lesson: Students will experience the interplay between winds and strings in the overture and discriminate between their respective sounds. Lesson Objectives: Students will be able to respond to the timbre difference between the sound of wind and string instruments by holding up cards depicting each family. Anticipatory Set: Ask the students if they’ve ever seen an opera. Explain to them that an Opera is kind of like an old musical. The characters rarely speak though they sing almost everything even normal boring conversations get turned into music. Then tell the students that today we’ll be talking about an overture. Overture starts with the word over. Think of a plane flying over a city and taking pictures. A plane moves really fast so you’ll only get to see some parts of the city, but you’ll see enough to get the general idea of the city. This is what an overture to an opera is like. The musicians in the orchestra play little bits of the songs that happen later in the opera.

This way the audience can feel familiar with some of the songs from the very beginning. We’re going to talk about an overture today but first let’s look at the instruments that you might find in the orchestra for an opera. Learning Activities and Checking For Understanding: Begin by showing the attached video examples of each family of orchestral instruments to give students a sound concept for the instruments in the orchestra. Have students sit in an arc in front of you each student with two cards. One card with wind instruments and the other with string instruments. Begin playing the Don Giovanni recording, as the instructor, hold up the card of whichever family is more prominent in the music. On more than a few occasions both families will be equally prominent. After a few minutes of showing the students which card to hold up have them independently hold up their cards. Most likely there will not be consensus within the class; this is okay. When the piece is finished ask students if they always had the same card up as their neighbor. Explain to the students that music is subject to interpretation and that often times there isn’t a right or wrong answer to a musical question. Materials, Resources, Bibliography: String instrument sound examples https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxFNHeXKmrY Woodwind Example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OjqeyOvC1c Saxophone section can be omitted if time is a factor Brass Examples https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EvgkO_bwQA

Don Giovanni Overture recording https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyjVCbTo5F0 One of each of these cards for students.