Pictures at a Classroom Exhibition

The two things closest to my heart as a classroom educator are literacy and music appreciation.  Today, I had a chance to combine these two passions. I unashamedly snuck in some classical music into the students' day. Oh, and did I mention it was Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky? Russian virtuosity for the win! (I had to introduce them slowly before we get to Rachmaninoff...)

Children are in a process of learning how to cope with emotions, changes in life, and the healthy outlets that they can use to do so.  Certainly music has served as a major way in which I have experienced my emotions in a healthy way and expressed what it means to be human on the deepest level.

When I thought of Pictures of Exhibition, I wasn't sure how to relate it to the children's lives. They didn't grow up in Tsarist Russia (pity!) Then, I remembered why Mussorgsky wrote this great work. He was devastated over the death of his artist friend, Victor Hartmann.  As an hommage to his friend and a way to cope with his grief, Mussorgsky composed this masterful work for solo piano.

I chose a simple storybook that told the tale of how Mussorgsky was friends with Hartmann and was shook deeply by his sudden death.  A critical component of the lesson was connecting what Mussorgsky was experiencing with the children's lives. Some identified with his grief and others simply stated that sometimes they too needed outlets to express their "sad feelings" but were not quite sure how.

One way that an educator or adult could get children to connect with the story behind Pictures at an Exhibition is to get them to identify fine arts activities which they enjoy. Many tiny hands shot up when I asked: "Who here likes to paint?" or "who likes to draw?" They understood that humans express themselves through visual art.  Many even grasped that Mussorgsky could portray those visual expressions through sound. Indeed, many of the students were able to vividly imagine each scene being "painted" by Mussorgsky when I revealed the title of various movements. (Yes, I played the piano version for them as I read the story of how Mussorgsky came to write Pictures at an Exhibition.)

This virtuosic piece of piano music is so rich and colourful and narrative that it is a great starting point for children in learning about classical music. The reaction of the boys in my class was particularly remarkable since they were impressed by the true athleticism required by a pianist to play the more technically demanding passages of this work.

Mussorgsky's motivation for writing Pictures at an Exhibition is a story of how the arts are fundamental to human life. We use them to express the deepest scars that grief leaves on us.  In a time when arts funding in schools is the first thing to be cut, it is now often the role of the classroom teacher to bring this aspect of a child's education alive.

My earnest hope is that the children grasped that they can turn to their preferred art form in times of joy,  trial, and tribulation. I look forward to the rest of the year with this creative group and cultivating their interests - helping them to become increasingly comfortable with showing their individuality and allowing their feelings to be explored through the fine arts. After all, isn't that what it is to be human?