Ten pieces follow up

Harry had his cello lesson at the weekend and Peter attended the under-5's music session at The Sage. We also watched two more of the Ten Pieces performances at home.

Harry's favourite so far is Mars by Holst so we had a look at some of the follow up activities from the BBC resources page.

We listened to Venus, Bringer of Peace by Holst and compared the pieces. Harry identified that Venus uses higher, slower and quieter notes to create more peaceful music. We talked about the musical terms 'tempo' (speed) and 'ostinato' (repeated pattern of notes).

We then did some painting. I asked Harry to paint what he saw in his imagination when he listened to Venus and Mars. 

This was his Venus, using glow in the dark paint for the lighter areas. The paint (from Tesco) worked really well; they took the picture into their bedroom at bedtime and it was a great effect. 

This was Mars. The black circle areas are the eyes of the God of War and the red planet Mars is his mouth.

Peter joined in with painting too and enjoyed doing some sponge printing.

Harry also played the beginner cello version of Mars from the resources page. He enjoyed this and could see the link to the complete piece of music. We will use this over the next two weeks for extra practise as Harry's music class is now finished for a half term break.