Art Song Educational Video Project

View "Three American Art Songs", the demonstration video produced by the Lotte Lehmann Foundation.

Population Served by Video Project

Need Served by Video Project

Video Project Objectives, Activities, and Details

Innovative Ideas

Population Served by Video Project (top)

The art song educational video (lasting 15 minutes), is aimed at an English-speaking, teenage or young adult audience, but adults also enjoy it.

Contacts with educators interested in utilizing the video in their classrooms have already been established throughout the US, Australia and Canada.

Need Served by Video Project (top)

Academic and public awareness of classical song is waning, and deserves our attention and commitment. Although written by composers as famous as Mozart or Bernstein, classical song is unfamiliar to even many music educators. Where music appreciation is still taught, teachers provide introduction to orchestra music and opera, but few teach anything about classical song. Classical song recitals, such as those subsidized by one of our advisors, Marilyn Horne, help encourage recognition and appreciation of the song recital, and a few radio programs play classical song - but in the end there is little exposure for classical song outside of rare recitals.

The absence of information about classical song can be helped by providing schools and universities, at little or no cost, with our classical song educational video. Whatever the cause for the decline in availability of classical song - we have the means to reverse the trend and restore appreciation of this unique performance art form with this first step.

Video Project Future (top)

We have put this project on hold, waiting for a more auspiscous time to approach schools about introducing art song into their curriculum in any way. But our dream for future videos can still be presented here.

Using the experience gained from producing the demo video, we will design a second educational video to familiarize viewers with classical song. This will target a contemporary, younger audience. In future videos subject matter will be integrated into teaching modules for foreign language (poems by Goethe for example), history (19th Century Romanticism), and literature classes (exploring Shakespeare or Dickinson through song). Some schools already introduce their students to opera and classical symphonic music; this video would provide exposure to classical song as well. Since many music teachers are unfamiliar with classical song, the video will be designed to be self-contained and need little introduction. The goal isn’t necessarily to persuade students to sing classical song, but at a minimum to build an educated audience who can appreciate this subtle union of the arts of poetry and music.

For all our videos, emphasis will be placed on introducing classical song as something accessible, personal, and universal, not esoteric. In general, the four elements that make up classical song will be stressed: poetry, music, piano accompaniment, and singing. Diverse composers and poets will be showcased in order to demonstrate a broad range of styles and sentiments. The poetry may be read and discussed as to what it might elicit musically, e.g., adventurous themes inspiring exciting music, and the pianist may demonstrate the active role the “accompaniment” has in this music. All songs will be performed in their entirety whenever possible.

All videos will encourage student participation; a feedback page will be included with the video and the students will know that they have an active role in improving future videos. In the future the students will be asked to find a poem they like, write a melody to it, and to send us a tape of themselves singing it. We will have a piano accompaniment written and make a recording and then return the “finished” song to the original classroom. The students can then sing their poetry to their music with the piano accompaniment furnished. These student songs may also be made available on the Lehmann website.

Innovative Ideas (top)

The classical song educational video will be distributed free of charge to any teachers interested in seeing it; this availability will encourage wide distribution. There will be emphasis on alerting a variety of teachers who might be able to utilize the video to augment their range of instruction, such as teachers of foreign languages (there will be songs in German, Spanish and French), social studies, English and English literature and, of course, music.

Because of the integrated nature of the story line of the video and the classical song contents, the fields of both language and music can find benefit. Living in a world of sound bites and slogans, the students will be exposed to a deeper and more enduring realm: the combined art world of poetry and music.

This video has charted new territory: as far as can be determined, our classical song educational film is the first ever to have been produced. The educators and media specialists we have contacted for feedback on this project are intrigued and enthusiastic. Because no precedent exists, we can be completely creative in the development of the educational strategies within the video as well as the artistic level we establish. Inventive, creative screenplays have been written for the next videos.