Haven String Quartet
The Haven String Quartet, in addition to teaching in the Empowerment Zone neighborhoods of New Haven, enjoys performing in concert halls, schools, youth centers, prisons, theaters, community centers, and churches across New England. Community concerts bring diverse people together in traditional and untraditional venues to experience and enjoy the power of live chamber music.
Workshops (Grades K-8; adjusted to accommodate average age in audience)
The Haven String Quartet offers interactive workshops to students, introducing them to the repertoire of the string quartet. Our workshops present the ideas of melody and harmony, musical dialogue, and the ways that music can convey expressive content.
We also offer two children’s stories with narration and original music by Netta Hadari: Giraffes Can’t Dance and The Lorax. A narrator is added to the quartet and Hadari’s compositions flow aside the dramatic reading of the text.
Workshop I – The String Quartet Through Time and Place (Grades K-8)
The objective of this workshop is to introduce students to the string quartet as a genre that has developed over the last 250 years, and is accomplished through a skit that integrates active listening and imagination.
The quartet first demonstrates the origins of the string quartet in a Minuet by Haydn; a discussion ensues about the origins of the ensemble for court entertainment in the 18th century. A movement from demonstrates the profoundly interactive nature of the string quartet, as instruments trade bits of melody back and forth, in parallel to the rivalries and friendships that characterized social life in Beethoven’s Vienna.
Next, Ravel brings us to the 20th century as students are encouraged to listen for the very different colors and sounds that the French composer coaxed from the instruments, in a style that was truly new (and not so popular with his professors at the Conservatoire!) Finally, a selection from Keith Volans’ celebrated string quartet, Hunting: Gathering, demonstrates the possibilities of this classical ensemble as contemporary cultures mix and mingle.
Length: 45 minutes
Workshop II – Musical Conversation: A Workshop on Melody and Accompaniment (Grades 3-9)
This presentation focuses on the interactions between the instruments of the string quartet, in order to illustrate the idea of music as a conversation. Students are introduced to the ideas of melody and accompaniment, s well as to the ways that melodies can be varied and developed to convey different feelings.
What is a melody? What is accompaniment? These questions start us off as we explore the way that instruments can “talk” to each other in a piece of music. First we introduce students to the sound of the quartet, by playing the opening to Beethoven’s String Quartet Opus 18 No. 5. Then we ask them to consider the difference between the main voice and the accompanying voices in a piece of music. Through a detailed look at this movement, we lead students through the techniques that Beethoven uses to allow the instruments to interact. We compare moments when one person is “talking” (in music) to moments when everyone is “saying” the same thing at the same time, to yet other moments when the instruments seem to interrupt one another and “finish each other’s sentences.” We thus introduce the idea of music development by comparing a quartet to a conversation between four people.
Next, we use the third movement of the same work (a Theme and Variations movement) to show even more clearly how instruments can take turns saying something important. This movement also demonstrates the possibilities of accompaniment, from the most minimal to the comically intrusive. Each section of this movement uses the same melody in a new way, creating new textures and feelings. We ask the students to consider the mood of each section: what might the instruments be “talking” about? Are they arguing, or agreeing? What are the musical jokes in this piece?
The workshop ends with the last movement of this string quartet all the way through. Using the listening skills developed in the presentation, students are asked to follow the part of one instrument and to notice what role Beethoven gives it in this “conversation.”
Optional: If age appropriate, this workshop can be expanded to include a performance of either Giles Andreae’s Giraffe’s Can’t Dance or Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, both with original music by Netta Hadari, both of which demonstrate how the string quartet can function as an expressive unit.
Length: 45 minutes
Quartet only Workshop/Performance: $810
Quartet with Narrator (Workshop/Performance): $1,015
Two Workshops/Performances (Back to Back): $1,350
Two Workshops/Performances with Narrator (Back to Back): $1,485
Curriculum Connections:
Music, Social Studies, Language Arts
Young Audiences Arts for Learning Connecticut: Our mission is to integrate the arts into the lives of children in educational and community settings. Our vision for Connecticut is that all children realize their potential through the arts; that the arts are valued for their ability to improve our schools and communities; that, by participation in the arts, children come to understand and value themselves, their neighbors, and the world cultures they share.
We are an Affiliate of VSA arts… an international nonprofit organization that is creating a society where all people with disabilities learn through, participate in, and enjoy the arts.
We offer educational classroom workshops, school cultural programs, school arts programs, assembly programs, arts integration programs, artist in residence programs – bringing theater, music, drama, puppetry, visual arts, storytelling, drawing, painting, history and cultural arts to the classroom.