A Musical Collision Course: Puccini's Representation of Conflicting Cultures

IN PREPARATION

For this activity, students will need the reproducible handouts entitled A Musical Collision Course, a copy of the Ten Essential Musical Terms, and the audio clips.


CURRICULAR CONNECTIONS

Music, History and Social Studies, Humanities, and Arts


LEARNING OBJECTIVES

  • To develop students’ musical vocabulary while exploring the notion of “exoticism” in music
  • To deepen students’ critical listening skills
  • To foster students’ creativity and awareness of their own musical preferences


COMMON CORE STANDARDS

This activity directly supports the following ELA-Literacy Common Core Strands:


CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.2
Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.5
Analyze how an author's choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.