Keeping Score - Study the Symphony

The San Francisco Symphony's website Keeping Score is up for a Webby Award this year. Keeping Score is a comprehensive website full of educational materials about composers, scores, musical techniques, and symphonies.

There are two elements of Keeping Score that should be of particular interest to educators. The most immediately accessible section of Keeping Score is the interactive education elements that contain videos, images, and texts that tell the stories of composers. The interactive section also features explanations of musical techniques, the history of notable events and themes in the symphonic world, and analysis of various scores.















The second section of Keeping Score that teachers will be drawn to is the lesson plan library. In the lesson plan library teachers will find lesson plans developed to incorporate elements of the Keeping Score website. There are lesson plans appropriate for every grade level.

Applications for Education
What I like about Keeping Score is that while the materials are obviously appropriate for music classes, there are also materials that could be used in a social studies classroom. The stories of composers and the history section provide teachers with opportunities to talk about what was going on in the world when the composers were creating their scores and how that may have affected what the composers created.

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
Arts Edge - Podcasts and Lesson Plans
Classics for Kids - Classical Music Lesson Plans
Music Theory Lessons and Tutorials