Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 5

Cross-Disciplinary Lesson Plans: 2-3

Timeline Lesson Plan

American Heritage and Music. Identifying sequence of events in history. (Students could be asked to examine a time line to locate needed information, or they could be asked to place historical developments on a time line.)

American Heritage and Music. Demonstrate knowledge of and ability to think about the relationship among events:

• Group significant individuals by broadly defined historical eras
  
• Utilize multiple-tier time lines

Language Arts and Music. Choose or identify library resources to locate specific information.

Objective
Students will plot important American and/or World events that occurred during Beethoven's lifetime

Materials
Timeline worksheet | Answer Key
Scissors
Paste / glue
Timeline blank worksheet (enlarged) or a class timeline
Events worksheet

Lesson:

Beethoven lived from Dec 17, 1770 - March 26, 1827
Several events that were important in American and World history happened during his lifetime. Using given information students will plot these events on a timeline.

Beethoven's Hearing Loss - Cause and Effect in his Music Lesson Plan

American Heritage and Music. Identify a significant individual from a region of the world other than North America and discuss cause-and-effect relationships surrounding a major event in the individual's life.

Objective
Students will discuss how Beethoven's hearing loss affected his music and his musical abilities.

Materials
Beethoven's biography - student copy
Teacher - have a copy of The Heiligenstadt Testament to read from.
Teacher - have copy of "Beethoven Writes" to read from.
Scarves, cotton balls, ear muffs

Discuss:
How would the loss of hearing affect a composer?
How would the loss of hearing affect a performer?

Have students divide into groups. Give each group something to muffle their hearing. Have them experiment with how the world is different when you can hear just a little and then total hearing loss. Talk about it.

Read to the class portions from his Heiligenstadt Testament or his letters. Discuss his feelings. How did his hearing loss affect his music? How did it affect his life?

"Beethoven Lives Upstairs" Lesson Plan

Objective
Students will watch the movie "Beethoven Lives Upstairs" and discuss questions about Beethoven and his friendship with the boy in the movie.

Materials
Video: "Beethoven Lives Upstairs" Not Rated; Drama; 1989; 52 minutes; Color
Discussion questions

Selected Awards:
1993 EMMY Award Winner for Outstanding Children's Program; 1993 Parent's Choice Award - Best Video; Monitor Award for Best Director of a Children's Program (David Devine); Monitor Award Nominations for Best Children's Program, Best Editing, and Best Sound; Winner, New England Children's Film Festival, Boston; Award of Excellence from the U.S. National Board of Film Review; The American Film & Video Association's BLUE RIBBON Winner for Best Original Children's Program; The U.S. International Film and Video Festival GOLD CAMERA Award - Best Children's Program and Best Director (David Devine); Worldfest Houston, Bronze Award for Best Children's Program; DOVE Foundation Award - Best Children's Video; American Library Association Honor - Best Children's Program; Four 1993 Gemini Nominations: Best Writing, Best Actor, Best Editing & Best Sound; Official Selection for the Banff Television Festival; Finalist in the New York International Film Festival; Selected for Permanent Collection of the Museum of Radio & Television Arts, New York; 1993/94 CableACE Award Nomination - Best International Children's Program.

Description:
Christoph is the man of the house after his father passes away, leaving him, his infant sister, and mother to survive in Germany in the 1820s. Because money was tight, his mother decided to rent out his father's former study. The tenant is Ludwig van Beethoven: tremendously famous and eccentric. He was one of the greatest classical composers who had ever lived. He also was loud, noisy and obnoxious. Christoph soon learns that Beethoven is deaf and very angry about it. These two unlikely strangers become friends as Beethoven writes his ninth symphony, despite his deafness.

Discuss:

1. How did Christoph feel about Beethoven when he first moved into the study?
2. Why did Beethoven seem "crazy" to Christoph? Specifically, what did he do?
3. Why did Beethoven do such "crazy" things?
4. What effect did Beethoven's hearing loss have on his personality and lifestyle?
5. Can you really hear music - such as the piano- by listening through the floor? Try it.
6. How did Christoph discover Beethoven was deaf?
7. How did Beethoven and Christoph become friends?
8. What did Beethoven reveal about his childhood? Was it a happy childhood?
9. Why was his Ninth Symphony so different from any other works of music?
10. What happened at the end of the concert?
11. How does Chrstoph feel about Beethoven at the end of the story?

Beethoven's Hearing Loss - Medical Technology at the Time - Lesson Plan

Science and Music

• Make inferences from observation of phenomena and/or events.
  
• Identify the positive and/or negative impacts of technology on human activity.
  
• Evaluate conclusions based on scientific data

Objective
Students will learn about the medical technology of Beethoven's day and how it compares to today's technology when dealing with deafness.

Materials
Beethoven's biography - in depth
Construction paper, scissors, glue, tape
Paper towel rolls

Lesson: Talk to your students about Beethoven's deafness.

1. Ask them what they think the doctors tried to do for him.
2. What kind of hearing aid could they make for Beethoven?
3. Show them the Ear Horns that Beethoven used. Did they work for him?
   • They may have helped him understand other better when his hearing loss was only slight - but they would not have helped him after he became more severely deaf.
4. Have them construct their own "ear horns".
   • Do they work? In what situations do they work best? Compare different students ideas.

Teacher Information: The cause of Beethoven's deafness is generally thought to have been Otosclerosis - the abnormal growth of bone of the inner ear. This bone prevents structures within the ear from working properly and causes hearing loss.

Otosclerosis is a disease, which results in new bone formation either in the area of the stapes bone or in the cochlea housing the hearing nerve; or it can be a combination of both. When the bony deposits infiltrate the stapes bone, this bone is unable to vibrate and pass the sound into the inner ear. This results in what is called a conductive hearing loss, i.e., the sound is not being properly "conducted" into the inner ear.

1796/8: First signs of deafness

1801: Complains of buzzing in ears in letter to Wegeler & Amenda

1802: "Heiligenstadt testament" - Beethoven writes of his despair at worsening hearing

1814: Further deterioration sets in. Last public appearance as pianist

1816-18: Use of ear trumpets

Ear trumpets were probably early man's first attempt at coping with hearing problems. In pre-historic times, hearing trumpets were simply hollowed-out horns of cows, rams or other animals. Later versions in wood and metal followed the same general contours as the natural horns.

In later centuries, man continued to refine trumpets, experimenting with the acoustical properties of such materials as silver, shell, horn, artificial tortoise shell, and most recently, plastic.

1818-27: Conversation books. (Conversation had to be written)

1823: Almost totally deaf (left ear not as bad as right)

1825: Beethoven totally deaf

Supplemental Reading List
This reading list for young readers will help your students learn more about the ear and hearing loss.

Beethoven the Musician Lesson Plan

History of Music. What does it mean to be a professional musician/composer?

Objective
Students will discuss Beethoven's personal decision to become a professional musician / composer / conductor instead of a court composer. They will also discuss how this decision influenced other musicians in the future.

Materials
Paper and pencil

Beethoven was the first musician to not be employed or financed by a member of the nobility. All other composers before him had made their living by becoming a court composer for a nobleman or royalty.

Examples include:

• Haydn: Court composer of the Esterhazy family. (Kappellmeister)
• Mozart: Tribute money from several noble families
• Handel: Court composer for the Elector of Hannover - who later became King George of England. Handel wrote the "Royal Fireworks" music to get back in his good graces and later became the King George's royal composer.

By making this decision, Beethoven did not have to write music that he did not choose to write. He would hire his own musicians and make money from the sale of tickets to his performances. There are several well-known stories of his turning down invitations of the local nobility so that he could continue to write his music.

Beethoven's decision was a personal one. He did not want to write any music that was not his own.

1. Discuss or write about how his decision influenced other musicians and artists.
2. Pretend you are a newspaper reporter writing about Beethoven and why he would not work for the royal family. What would he say?

Lesson Plan on Pattern and Sequence. What was Beethoven's Motif?

Patterns, Relations, and Functions in Music and Math

• Use patterns to make generalizations and predictions by
  
• determining a rule and identifying missing numbers in a sequence;

Objective
Students will calculate the pattern of Beethoven's motif in his fifth symphony and determine if the rule for his motif was strict or flexible.

Materials
Recording of Beethoven's fifth symphony
Some kind of counting manipulative - Popsicle sticks, marbles, etc.

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony has a very clear motif. (ta ta ta taaaaaa)

1. Have students identify the number of notes in the motif.
2. Have them listen to the opening of the first movement to determine if this pattern of four notes is a consistent sequence according to rhythm.
3. Have them determine if the sequence is a consistent sequence according to pitches.

Compare and Contrast Beethoven's symphony to the modern orchestra

Data Analysis and Probability. Collect data, create a table, picture graph, bar graph, circle graph, or line graph and use them to solve application problems.

Objective
Students will compare and contrast the modern orchestra and an orchestra Beethoven would have used for his symphonies

Materials
Information on Beethoven's orchestra and a modern orchestra
Paper and drawing materials
Orchestra worksheet and seating chart

Lesson plan
Given the information on each orchestra - use drawings or colored paper to create a graph to compare the sizes of each section and overall size.

Beethoven's biography writing prompt lesson plan

Objective
Students will write Beethoven's biography in their own words after reading the given biography.

Materials
Beethoven biography for kids

Lesson ideas:

1. Have students rewrite the biography in their own words.
2. Have students pretend to be a reporter who just heard Beethoven's Fifth Symphony when it premiered. Have them include the information in the biography.
3. Have students create a story as if they had Beethoven living upstairs in their house.

The Glass Armonica Lesson Plan: The Science of Acoustics

The Glass Armonica - an unusual instrument
In 1761, Benjamin Franklin was inspired to invent his Glass Armonica when he heard music being played on a set of upright goblets filled with varying amounts of water by an eccentric Irishman named Richard Puckeridge. Franklin thought he could eliminate the difficult problems of tuning the water by giving the bowls themselves a fixed tonality based on the size of the bowls and the thickness of the glass.

Benjamin Franklin's invention was so unusual that it became immensely popular. He even toured Europe performing with his armonica. Several composers, including Beethoven and Mozart composed classical music for this instrument. Our first president, George Washington, was even a fan. His journal entry for April 1765 implies that he took the evening to hear the Armonica played in Williamsburg: "By my Exps. to hear the Armonica, 3.9"

You can imitate the sound of the armonica by using empty wine glasses and water. The teacher might want to demonstrate this instead of having it as a student activity.

Directions:

1. Clean your finger thoroughly and moisten it with water.
2. Gently rub finger on the top edges of an empty crystal wine glass. Move finger smoothly in a circular motion, making sure to cover the entire circumference of the glass rim.
3. As you move your finger over the rim, notice the pitch of the sound produced.
4. Now, add water to the glass and repeat the same procedure. Once again, take notice of the new pitch.

WHAT HAPPENS???

• The presence of water in the glass decreases the vibrational frequency. Therefore, the pitch is lower than that of the empty glass. Increasing the size of the glass would produce a similar effect in the tone of the sound.
• Students can try a similar experiment with a group of empty glass pop bottles filled to various levels of water.
• Can they match the opening motif of Beethoven's fifth symphony with their pop bottle armonica?

Ludwig van Beethoven Links