Great Instruments Help it Happen
We are blessed at Fox Chapel with a wide and creative variety of musical instruments geared to children and our musica-teaching needs. Last year the PTA financed the purchase of an outstanding digital piano, which allows me to accompany the children and direct them at the same time. (I can easily maintain eyecontact with students while using it). Thank you PTA--we're grateful.
Orff music at Fox Chapel
Xylophones are one of the oldest melody instruments in the world. In the 1920's Carl Orff, a German composer and music-educator, was looking for xylophones to help students play their own music through imporovising and composing. Instead if highly developed art intruments, he preferred those that were rhythmic, easy to learn, primitive and unsophisticated. karl Maendler developed special xylophones fot Orff's teaching purposes, then, in th e1930s, Orff produced music books for them.
In 1948 Bavarian Radio asked Carl Off to write music for children that they themselves could play. Seeking a way to train his students in rhythm, he incorporated movement, singing, spoken word with instrument playing. He called this blending of elememts "elementary music." It is music that is never "alone but forms a unity with movement, dance and speech. It is music that one makes oneself, in which one takes part not as a listener but as a partcipant. It is unsophisticated, employs no big forms, [but uses] ostinato and ronda [repeated patterns and sections]. Elementary music is near the earth, natural, suitable for the child" (Orff's own words). We follow Orff's philosophy closely in teaching music at Fox Chapel. here are some of the Orff instruments students play.