There are numerous resources and lesson plans available from this website to help you if you are planning music lessons.

One activity is to have the students research the 18th Century ‘Symphony’. There are a lot of interesting facts to learn like the number of movements, the standard instruments used at the time and the size of the orchestras. Have them find out which other composers wrote symphonies.

A LIstening Idea: String Quartet in C major “The Emperor”: 2nd movement.

This piece is a “Theme and Variations”, as it begins with a tune and that tune is repeated fout times with different instrumentation. You can split the class up into 3 groups, representing the cello, the viola and the violins. As the class listens to the music, they stand up if their group is the instrument playing the melody. The violins and viola will be difficult to distinguish the first time. here is a list of the variations:

Theme: violin 1
Variation 1: Violin 2
Variation 2: Cello
Variation 3: Viola
Variation 4: Violin 1