An American in Paris (George Gershwin)
By Gloria Nelson
 
    Step 1: In order to begin this experience, I believed it important for students to connect with feelings they may have had while traveling to a place that was new to them. Initially, I posed the following questions:
• “How many of you have traveled to a place you had not been before?”
• “Was this place in this country or a different country?”
• “What feelings do you remember during this experience?”

I instructed the students to please take a few minutes to share their answers with a partner. Next, I asked a few students to share with the class what their partner told them.

    Step 2: The next step was to locate Paris on the map and to hear what some of or students knew about that city. Since several of my students had been there, they served as a rich resource. A few students also offered to do some research to find out such things as the population of Paris and its points of interest, etc.

    Step 3: Students were given listening guides

The instructions were, “With a partner, please figure out the rhythm sections by tapping and speaking the rhythm syllables. Let me know when you are ready to share your ideas.”

Then I wandered throughout the class listening to them and giving help where needed. After sharing ideas, we tapped and said the rhythm sections together as a class.

    Step 4: We listened to a recording of “An American in Paris” and followed the guide for as many times as the students showed an interest. The highlight of our initial listening experience was identifying the “car horn” and “walking theme” sections.     (At a later date, five of my students actually performed on bicycle horns with the Oregon State University Symphony Orchestra.)

    Step 5: The second favorite involvement was singing the words I created for the “blues melody,” “Blues --------oh, I have really got the blues. See listening guide above.

Initially, I sang the melody and words to the students and had them echo the same a few times. I also talked about how Gershwin’s visitor may have been feeling a bit homesick. Then we sang the tune again with a little more emotion (actually, we hammed it up quite a bit!) before we listened again.

    Step 6: As previously mentioned in the Grieg Piano Concerto portion of this article, on an enlarged listening guide, we place magnets or other markers to indicate what was heard.     Step 7: We talked briefly about how music plays such an important role in enhancing the plot of movies and television programs. In a later lesson, I asked the students if they knew or other composers who had used music to describe feelings, to make people think of a certain place, or to enhance a story plot. They mentioned such compositions as “In the Hall of the Mountain King” (Greig), “Danse Macabre” (Camille Saint-Saens), music from “The Lion King” as well as their Disney favorites.