Ludwig Van Beethoven

Essential Questions (all students answer these questions)

What is Romanticism? (It has many definitions, and is many things.)

Music that fits in the romanticism genre shows a lot of feelings and is more flexible and soft and requires more imagination and self-interpretation from the artist.

How does your subject fit into the world of Romanticism (their work, their life)

Beethoven is considered to be one of the starters of romanticism by making his compositions not as rigid and have as many rules as the classical composers used.

Are there elements or aspects of your subject that are not romantic in nature?

His early work was more of the classical era, and his personality is definitely not romantic, because he was known for being strong minded and stubborn among other things.

Topic Questions

What composers influenced Beethoven? Did he meet them?

His early works were influenced by Haydn and Mozart, and he did meet them.

What was Beethoven like as a person?

Beethoven didn’t have an easy life and he was a person with a strong personality and his own opinions and could sometimes be hard to get along with, but the people around him often said he was a man of noble ideas and he was respected.

What was there about Beethoven's music that brought the element of romanticism into music

His music was a crossing point between the classical era to the romantic era and unlike his classical music before, his music used more emotion and had more originality.

Why is "The Eroica Symphony" important in music history

The Eroica Symphony was originally supposed to be dedicated to Napoleon but when Beethoven became unhappy with Napoleon’s imperial ambitions, he scratched out Napoleon’s name so violently he ruined the paper and ended up dedicating the symphony to his patron Prince Joseph Franz von Lobkowitz.

What happened to Beethoven in the second half of his life that made his music become

romantic?

After he became deaf, he probably couldn't compose music that was as strict, because romantic music leaves more to the imagination and is more flexible, so it was probably easier for him to compose.

The first part of the symphony can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFltqVS8d9I

Minstrel Show

when did they end? why?

The show ended at the end of WW2 when african-americans came home in search for equality and hopes to create a positive image of black people and culture

What did they represent?

The Minstrel Show was a show about white working class men dressing up and acting like plantation slaves, singing their songs and dances.

What was the music like?

They sang the slave songs that plantation slaves had sung while they worked.

General Questions:

How deeply rooted into society was this music or person at the time it was created (or when the person was alive and producing?)

The Minstrel Show was famous and worldwide by all sorts of people who were also interested in the culture of the african american plantation slaves, though it was racist.

How important or relevant is this music now in 2009? Who listens to it?

Nowadays, the Minstrel Show isn’t watched by people because the subject isn’t really important nowadays to the majority of people.

Is this music universal in appeal or is it very specific to a particular time, place, and culture, or audience?

The Minstrel Show was mainly for a white audience. It was very popular during the Civil War with because of it’s topic.

Is it easy to hear that this music is directly related to music that came before it, or is it difficult to find a connection to the past?

The Minstrel Show uses slave songs from plantation slaves in the south, and some slave songs originated from african songs so you could say that it was influenced from music before. Some of the songs on the Minstrel Show weren’t originally slave songs, but they were based on the same format as the slave songs so they wouldn’t sound out of place on the show, so those songs are related to the slave songs before that the slaves “composed” before.

Is this music related to or influenced by other art forms, or is it's content related to non-musical things (such as politics, society, race, class)

Yes. The show uses african american culture and their songs and dances. One thing about the show was that they weren’t trying to make fun of humiliate african american culture, though they still did, displaying them as ignorant and dirty, which were dome of the terms used to describe the african americans. Some people think that the white men on the show were people who liked the music, but hated the african americans themselves. The performers on the show were only allowed to be white men, so maybe there was some kind of grudge.

General Statement: The Minstrel Show was a show about african american culture and music performed by white men that was racist and humiliated african americans.

Recordings:

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kc4EwD5hoA

Social Boundaries

Today in Citizenship we talked about social boundaries. We talked about how there can be different groups in a school. In my opinion, many times, people do things without thinking about what they're doing, and it can really make people feel frustrated.

I think some things that make it hard to reach across boundaries is that many times, once people label you as someone, it's hard to change their impressions of you and you just get stuck with a label that might have been created about a misunderstanding or not even true.

These things happen because people compete and don't like to be proved wrong or intimidated.