Teaching Artist Preparation Experiment for Youth Orchestras and “Ode to Joy”
By Eric Booth
This experiment addresses a challenge with youth orchestras that perform Ode to Joy. I work with youth orchestras, especially “Music for Social Impact” youth orchestras around the world, but my background is as a theater teaching artist. I offer this preparatory set of activities to address a glaring weakness in the preparation for performances of Ode to Joy by young people around the world. I invite music colleagues to adopt and adapt this activity sequence to address the sad gap I see so widely.
Hypothesis: If young musicians have a stronger personal connection to the music they are playing, they learn faster and with more investment. Teaching artist engagement activities are a way to increase personal connections to music. Young people (at least those over age 7 or 8, an approximate developmental marker) need to find a reason for giving themselves to a piece of music if they are going to gain fully from its offer, from the time and energy they will invest in it, from going beyond compliance into caring.
I have seen youth orchestras around the world play Ode to Joy. I recognize that it is a useful choice, in that its musical challenges are developmentally well-targeted for advancing their musical skills. But I have seen bored and compliant students playing this piece—and disengaged students do not learn quickly or deeply. If students are compliant, if they practice and perform as requested, their hands and maybe their heads gain some extra facility, but their hearts and spirits—the essential centers of personal and social development in young people, not to mention the acceleration of their musical development—do not engage or expand.
They can play the piece, even play it well, and not make much progress toward the true goals of music for social impact work. Basically, they are emotionally and spiritually compliant and bored. We all know that students’ musical progress goes much faster and deeper if they play from the heart. This series of experiments proposes a series of activities to activate the heart connection in conjunction with playing the piece.
This experiment will go much better if those trying it would do all four parts of the experiment, instead of just one or two. We will never know if this kind of work makes a real difference unless we give it a chance, rather than just dabbling with a little taste. You wouldn’t expect a musical experiment to make a real difference if you just gave it a little try; so please give this experiment a full try. And please let me know what you discover by doing it.
It would be possible to design similar activity sequences for more advanced pieces of repertoire.
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Activity Sequences
Ode to Joy, Beethoven
Entry Point for Ode to Joy, Beethoven:
The experience of joy. How is joy different than happiness? What are joy’s features? What aspects of joy does Beethoven evoke for a young person today? Is a young person’s experience of joy the same as an older person’s? Is joy the same in different cultures; are the experiences that bring joy the same in different cultures? Can people experiencing difficulty in life experience joy? Where does joy live in your life and in the lives of those around you?
"Shared joy is doubled joy; shared sorrow is halved." – Swedish proverb
Four preparatory activities to be done on different days:
1. Research and analysis.
Key question: Is there a difference between being happy and feeling joy? Have each young musician ask this question of two or more members of their family, separately, and bring back their answers. Have them ask at least one grownup they respect outside of their family (given appropriate opportunities), and bring back the answer(s). Have them ask two strangers, in safe situations. Have them take notes on each person’s answer. In rehearsal, have them share their answers in small groups of about four, and see if the small groups can agree on what is the same and different about being happy and feeling joy. What can each small group conclude about the difference between happiness and joy?
2. Personal history of joy.
Applying the conclusions of the previous step to oneself. Start by having each student make a list (either at home or during program time) of three specific times in their lives when they have felt happy and three specific times when they have felt joy. Have them pick two of the occasions of happiness and two of the occasions of joy and find a short expression of each one their instrument—so they can repeat each of these four little musical gestures. Urge them to make each as precisely close to the feeling connected to those four experiences as they can—can they capture the differentiation between happiness and joy musically?—that’s the challenge. Have each one then pick their favorite “happiness” bit of music and their favorite “joy” piece of music. Go around the group to hear the happy choices and then the joy choices. Have the group discuss the joy choices--which ones are similar? Have them sit together in small groups of joy-similar sound choices. Have each of the small groups (should be no more than 4 per group, you can split larger groups into smaller ones.) Have them put together their joy ideas into a short composition that lasts about 15-20 seconds and includes the musical gesture from each one in the group. Rehearse. Perform for one another.
3. Beethoven’s sense of joy.
Have students sit in small “thinking groups.” Using the score that the young people are using, play a recording of the piece for them. Go back and look at small sections of it and ask them which aspects of joy Beethoven was capturing in each section. See if the small groups can find words to describe the particular kind of joy Beethoven was capturing in each segment. Play each section you are going to focus on two or three times, as they listen to find the specific kind of joy in each focal section. Tie their conclusions closely to the music--they have to be able to point out specific things in the music that lead to their conclusions. End this workshop with a short whole-group discussion about this: Beethoven was deaf when he wrote this. He could only hear it in his imagination as he composed it, and he never could hear it performed. He was deeply upset about his deafness, and was going through a hard time in his life. But he wrote about and was able to experience joy in these life circumstances. What does this tell us about Beethoven, about people?—he felt all that about joy, and wrote music that captures many aspects of it, even when he was deaf and troubled in his life.
4. Clarifying purpose.
Why do we play music for other people? Collect many ideas from the group in answer to that question. There will probably be a mix of serious and some joking reasons, all are welcome. Write them down on a board or large paper. Are there some statements by famous musicians of various kinds about why they play music? Add them if you want to add a few. Add your own (teacher’s) genuine reasons.
Can they (and you) cite specific examples of times when music fulfilled those purposes? Can you cite examples of times when music you played fulfilled one of those purposes?
Have kids in pairs try to answer these two questions between them, before sharing answers with the larger group: 1. Which of those purposes could playing Ode to Joy fulfill? 2. Do we have a responsibility to one another and to the audience to do everything we can to fulfill our performing purpose?—why do/don’t we have a responsibility?
In pairs again, first before sharing answer in a whole group: What are some of the musical things we can do that will help people we play for experience the joy Beethoven intended to share through us? Again, have them share this in pairs first before opening to a larger discussion: Here is a big question that even professional musicians deal with: What can musicians do inside themselves as they play Ode to Joy that helps audiences experience the joy we want to share with them.
Open a discussion about internal emotional state and preparation and performance—before they start the first note, and then while they are performing. Include late in the discussion how you (the teacher) manage this for music that is important to you, and add any information from celebrated musicians that addresses this question.
Finally, see if the group can come up with and agree to use a little routine or ritual that reminds them to bring themselves to the right internal state for playing Ode to Joy. After they have a sense of that preparation routine, have the group decide on a signal that someone in the orchestra is designated to give (preferably not the conductor) that gives everyone a few seconds to prepare their inner state before the conductor takes over to begin.