Composer Study – Handel

It’s already November, so hard to believe. I just now finally feel like I’m in the swing of school and now the holidays are just around the corner. It seems the days, weeks and months go so much faster than I do. We had intended on finishing up this composer study a long time ago. All I can say is at least we are finished now.

Zippy chose Handel as the composer to study this time because my husband and the kids went to a Messiah performance at Benaroya Hall around Christmas time last year. Zippy enjoyed it so much, so she wanted to learn more about the composer, Handel. To learn about Handel’s life, we read the book Handel at the Court of Kings (Great Musicians Series) by Opal Wheeler. It was a very interesting book. The part that seemed to get everybody’s attention the most in the book was the page about Bach walking a long ways to meet Handel and then missing him by a matter of minutes. JD Boy felt so bad that he had tears in his eyes. He tried to figure out how to solve the problem, but I reminded him that they are both deceased at this point.

We also listened to the The Story Of Handel in Words and Music several times and enjoyed that very much. We have found that listening to this series in the car is a great way to learn about composers and their music.

We listened mostly to two albums of Handel music. One was of the Messiah and the other was Water Music. I also managed to find a few other Handel pieces on different CD’s around the house. So we enjoyed immersing ourselves in Handel’s music. I definitely have some favorite pieces and not so favorite, but they don’t necessarily match with my kids. They enjoy uncommon pieces as well as the famous ones. Guess that means that they are definitely appreciating music.

The kids also did some notebook pages to go with this study. Even my three-year-old did one of these.

Notebook page sources are: (top) from the Handel/Schumann Companion CD (goes with the Opal Wheeler book that we read); (bottom left and right) Great Composers (Coloring Book); (bottom center) Hold That Thought Advanced History Notebook Pages.