The core idea of the project “Theatre music for Bluebeard” was to lead the students – who were not composers and had never played in a real theater – to compose musical pieces commenting a theatrical performance (interpreted by their peers attending another school). The pieces were then performed and interpreted by the students who had composed them.
The teacher/composer – who in this project cooperated with the classes of Ensemble Music and History of Music and with the teacher who coordinated the students-actors – took care of drawing up the general musical project, coordinating the pieces to be composed, including a detailed planning of the music interventions, of their features (atmosphere, duration, velocity/danceability) and of the definitive instruments, on the basis of:
- the members at disposal for the ensemble;
- a certain timbre variety;
- the absence of performance difficulties in the pieces (when working with classes different from one’s own, the young composers/interpreters can present various abilities because coming from different classes of the two-year/three-year period).
The project provided for the cooperation between various teachers/subjects, and was organized according to three distinct stages: composition, orchestration of what composed, final performance. The first stage can be conducted in the classrooms of the common subjects, and requires the use of a piano and an IWB, and a continuous sharing with the teacher in charge of the theatrical text. The second stage has to be necessarily conducted both in the ensemble music classroom and in the place of the performance. The third stage of this project was conducted at the Piccolo Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and it was particularly laborious because it was the first time in which the students-musicians (in the orchestra pit) and the students-actors (on stage) interacted. A recorder was necessary in order to record the music rehearsals and send such recordings to the actors-students who used them during their rehearsals.
Resources for the composition
classroom with a piano
IWB
Internet connection
software for music writing
suggested books (at least for the teacher)
Resources for the ensemble music rehearsals
large classroom
music stands
chairs
podium for the conductor
piano
percussions
recorder (with or without an external microphone)
The skills, goals and training objectives selected by the teacher for this experience are shown below.
The students learned how to:
- analyze and imitate the style of a conductor;
- identify the differences between microform and macroform in music;
- understand the peculiarities of musical composition for the theater;
- identify the difference between instrumentation and orchestration;
- produce original musical ideas and brief pieces (even guided by the teacher) using conventional/non-conventional musical languages;
- orchestrate their ideas (even guided by the teacher) according to a compulsory instrumentation indicated by the teacher;
- use (or perfect the use) of a musical notation software;
- behave correctly in a Theater both during rehearsals and during the performance.
| Presentazione della buona pratica | Download |
| Il sito di P. Alessandro Polito | Click here |
| La playlist con tutti i brani di Barbablù | Click here |
| Il sito del metodo di P. Alessandro Polito | Click here |
| Progetto per la messa in scena di Barbebleue | Download |
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