Learning About Nature Through
Music and the Arts
Be Curious Be Inspired Create and Share Through Music |
Be Curious Be Inspired Create and Share Through Music |
As you can see in my previous post, using music and the arts to nature can create a very rich and emotional connection. I have, again, spent all year using music to help students in all classes relate to so many elements of nature: water in our province, animals and their habitats, seasons, and many more. This is not unusual; many composers create music about nature, so we are doing so, too, and often connecting the music curriculum with the science and social studies curricula while we are doing so. The environment club itself has been creating activities, plays, songs etc to help reach students in the school, to get them to form empathy and care about the environment. Their projects have been amazing and engaging for other students in our school. Here, I will be focusing on the experience at Henteleff Park that the school environment club had back in May, and how we have been using the arts to add a more deep and personal response to that park visit. I have been collaborating with Ian Keenan, a member of the board, for many months leading up to this experience, which we hope to be the first of many, as students in our school develop a relationship, a reconnection, with the natural world around them. There are so many people, and podcasts, and books that built up to how to start to create a deep connection through the arts to this nature walk. First, let me start with The Environmental Musician, Emily Thoroski. Emily's education in Environmental Science, combined with a passion for music is explained so well in this video: To develop the connection with, and the care for, which leads to action for the environment, Emily shares that we must communicate the importance of acting for the environment, and a way to get people to feel deeply is through arts, which touch our spirit. Then, there is the EnviroSongsters, who speak on this podcast about touching hearts of children to get them to care about nature through music, on Earthy Chats. Give it a listen as it's amazing. I am so very inspired by Tiiu Strutt, of Land Heart Song, who talks about how singing, and using our voice creates a personal and emotional connection to the nature around us. I also very much loved listening to this podcast, in which Susanne Heaton is interviewed about the many healing benefits of forests. I also wanted to think about soundscapes themselves, with the field of bioacoustics. Students created sound maps, and were also encouraged to draw, and write phrases they felt inspired to write about what they were experiencing around themselves. This webinar from The Ontario Society for Environmental Education was fascinating for this: In the webinar above, they talk about composer R. Murray Schafer: "“Soundscape” has an origin in Canada. Composer R. Murray Schafer built his academic and professional career on the popularization of soundscapes. He founded the “World Soundscapes Project” in 1969 at SFU in BC with the goal of raising public awareness of sounds through active and careful listening, and a goal of recording and documenting changes of sound in the environment. All with an overarching purpose of creating an ecologically balanced soundscape where the relationship between people and the environment is in harmony." Before we left on our walk to Henteleff Park, we read the book 'Écouter': After we returned, over several days, we started to pick phrases and sounds that they had written down at the park that stood out as shared experiences. I shared some ideas of how to play instruments with their phrases, and how the melody would work. Then we put the words into a framework of verse and chorus. Then I played that first verse and chorus to see if they liked it. They did, and so we picked more phrases and ideas. We also talked about how to include some of the sounds of the park in the music itself. We thought about the sound of the chickadee song -2 notes played on a flute near the beginning. Then later, at about 2 minutes (in the video), there is the sound of the Red Eyed Vireo, who sounds like they are asking themself a question, then answering it over and over at different pitches, also played by the flute. There is also a double bass throughout, for the drone of the bee, and a rolling guitar accompaniment for the rise and fall of the wind. These motifs are techniques that composers use with symphonic poems, to create the sounds of environments, stories. In the future, I hope this piece, and their experience in nature, inspires other students to want to visit as well. It is my hope that other classes get to have the benefits of forest healing next year. This is where my reading of the important teachings of Natural Curiosity, and Braiding Sweetgrass, The Walking Curriculum, and Land Heart Song's encouragement to create music about what we are curious about during our visits has led us. There is quite the disconnect between humans and the natural world, where - I find - students don't see how we are connected to the nature around us... trees providing oxygen, pollinators providing food... so it is so important to establish this reconnection...
Afterwards, one class, where many environment club students happen to be members, asked me to play the video for their classmates. They were beaming, and saying the lyrics along with the video, demonstrating how much adding music deepened this experience for them. At the end, I reminded them of earlier in the year, when we had walked out and made fresh footprints in the snow while listening to Debussy's "Des pas sur la neige". At the time he was composing, impressionist artists portrayed impressions of moments in nature. Often, the arts are connected in different eras, so there are many examples of composers such as Debussy and Ravel creating music that are impressions of moments in nature as well, such as "Des reflets dans l'eau" and "The Snow is Dancing". I told them that Debussy was bringing an experience of a quiet walk in the snow to life, and here we were, 200 years later, trying to make those same footprints and imagine what he was trying to share with the world. If only he knew schoolchildren were walking in his footsteps 200 years later. Perhaps he had no idea where his music would go. None of us presently living can know where the reach of our art might go. I compared that experience with this one, of them creating their own lyrics and collaborating with me on the music to tell the story of their calming experience to others who had not been there. Something to think about.... That walk in the snowy fall led that group to a project creating theme music and sound design for a storybook about winter, using Soundtrap, just as this song does. But this one is a song of their own experiences that connects even more.
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Click HERE to go back to the first postBio - Jennifer EngbrechtI am a music specialist in the Louis Riel School Division in Manitoba, Canada. I have a strong interest in the interrelationship of all subject areas, especially infusing the arts into all learning, and as their own stand-alone subjects. NEW:
So excited to be interviewed for Green Teacher Magazine's "Talking With Green Teachers" Podcast My article in the MSSTA Journal for Fall 2021... Click on the image below:
My article in the Summer 2021 Green Teacher Magazine. Click on the image below:
Disconnect: The Outdoor Education Podcast - listen to this episode about Teaching Music Outside by clicking on the picture below:
Looking for the WSO Manitoba Mosaic lesson for Hey Terre by Kelly Bado?
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