A Midsummer Night's Dream - Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre

Music, Movement and Mime: Activity 2Musical expression, like expression in language, can be achieved through how quicklywe speak, how loudly or softly we speak, and how well we articulate meaning. In AMidsummer Night’s Dream music expresses the text or the story, and this is both anexercise in listening to music to increase aural perception, and in thinking about howmusic can be an expression of Shakespeare's verse.Have students listen to the excerpts and consider the following questions:1. In what ways could music depict dramatic or comic moments?2. How could the themes of "strife and harmony", "order and conflict" and "realityand dreaming" be expressed musically?3. How might the music of the forest differ from the music of the court?4. How would the music of the fairies differ from the music of the four mortal loversor the tradesmen known as the "rude mechanicals"?5. Listen for specific musical instruments – violins, trumpets, piano, and flutes – thentry to determine what "ceremonial" trumpets, "romantic" violins or "clownish"bassoons suggest about plot, theme, and character.6. Have students talk about how a particular section of music makes them feel andimagine what action might be occurring with the music.7. How do contrasting textures in the music correspond to the contrasting textures ofthe different groups of characters?40