Music History For Kids Free Music Curriculum
Introduction
Music History for Kids is a free online music history curriculum for music teachers and students to learn about music history. Each topic includes information about the music eras, composers, and instrumentation, along with song samples, activities, and critical thinking questions. This site helps teach music history to kids, who can easily access this as a music history lesson in the classroom. Students can work on their tablets or laptops to independently research or study. Music History for Kids includes free music history worksheets to enhance each lesson. Everything you need to learn about music history is in the same location, making learning music history easy.
How to Use Music History for Kids
Click on the links below to access each lesson. Each music lesson is divided into music eras or popular music genres. Buttons lead to pages about instrumentation and the composers of each period.
Why is Music History Divided Into Eras?
Have you ever wondered why music history is divided into eras? Music history spans thousands of years. To make it easier to see and discuss musical trends, music historians divide time into eras. The eras above apply to “Western Music History” and don’t take into consideration Indigenous American or Eastern music. “Western music” is any music from Europe and America that began with Ancient Greek and Roman culture.
What is a Music Era? An era of music is a period in history with unique stylistic trends, instruments, and compositional techniques that develop from the influence of its culture and historical events.
Music eras are organized by time periods according to their musical characteristics, instrumentation, and compositional techniques. Examples of musical characteristics include melody, rhythm, texture, dynamics, and harmony. New inventions, tastes, or politics can influence the music we listen to. Historians label a new era when there is a significant change in these elements.
What about composers who don’t fit nicely into an era?
The dates for each era are set, but that doesn’t mean composers stopped making music in that style on those exact dates. This is why we have “transitional” composers. Transitional composers are composers who overlap two musical eras. Beethoven is an example of a transitional composer. Beethoven composed music during the classical era, but helped usher in the Romantic era near the end of his life when he became deaf. An example of the opposite is Brahms, a Romantic era composer. Brahms was considered a “traditional” composer because he leaned on past musical tastes and forms for his compositions.
How Are the Music Eras Given Names?
Musical eras tend to coincide with similar trends in art, writing, and architecture. Consider the difference between Baroque and Classical architecture. You can see from the pictures below that there is a distinct difference between the two. Music also reflects these architectural preferences. Classical melodies are less embellished and have balanced phrases compared to the highly ornamented polyphonic Baroque era.
What is the difference between the two buildings above?
How Technological Advances Influence Music
Sometimes music era names have to do with technological advances. An example of an era named for its many innovations is the Renaissance Era. “Renaissance” is a term that describes a burst of new art, philosophy, and scientific ideas in society.
During the Industrial Revolution, machines, assembly lines, factories, and mass production rose to prominence. The Modern Era reflects this society. Music became very mathematical with the rise of Arnold Schoenberg and Serialism, and dissonant chromatic pitches were used more often.
Computers have recently changed music tastes again. Historians are beginning to label this the Postmodern era. Do you like this new name, or should we call it something else, like the Computer Era?
Critical Thinking
- As a class, brainstorm new names for our current music era. Why did you pick these names? Vote for the name you like.
- What is a transitional composer? Name an example of one.
- Based on the photographs of the two buildings, what characteristics do you think Baroque and Classical music have?
How Did Music Begin?
The Beginning of Music
Our ability to make music is distinctively human. We have found artifacts about music that date back thousands of years ago. The oldest known musical instrument is a 60,000-year-old Neanderthal flute. The flute was discovered in Divje Babe cave near Cerkno, Slovenia, and is made out of the bone of a bear with four pierced holes to make the pitches.
Notation
Notation is a way to communicate musical information visually. Modern-day notation shows the tempo (speed of the song), dynamic (loudness/softness of the song), rhythm (duration of notes), and pitches (the frequency of each sound), and may even have other performance instructions. Basically, notation is a visual map of the music. The earliest known musical notation is written on a 4,000-year-old Sumerian clay tablet. It gives instructions and tuning for a hymn that honored the ruler Lipit-Ishtar.
You can click on the buttons above to find out more about music history, or download the worksheet below to be a music history detective and discover new and exciting facts about music history on this site.