Teaching Resources: Pictures at an Exhibition
In honor of Modest Mussorgsky’s birthday (born March 21, 1839 in Russia), here is a collection of. some of my favorite teaching resources for his most famous work, Pictures at an Exhibition. I hope you find them useful!
The Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra created an INCREDIBLE collection of teaching resources for Pictures meant to be used during distance learning. Each movement of the work has it’s own set of resources, including a well-made video lesson, and sheet music from the various sections of the orchestra. There are also links to three full performance videos.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra had created a 36-page PDF teaching guide to the work that is really good. There are 3 lesson plans included, along with links to relevant resources - including a Spotify playlist that includes the entire work performed by the CSO, links to the actual artworks that Mussorgsky was trying to portray, and some amazing handouts for students, including a very cool listening map.
Similar to the CSO, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra has put together a very useful PDF teaching guide to Pictures at an Exhibition, meant to be used in conjunction with students attending a young people’s concert. This 24-page PDF guide has lots of lesson plans, links and worksheets to hand out to students.
I found a wonderful Prezi Listening Guide, created by Pam Czekay, a music teacher in New Jersey. The listening guide is very well done, and includes the music from the Promenade movement. The presentation is 8 slides long and includes some background information about the composer and the piece. Very cool.
The New York Philharmonic hosts a collection of teaching resources for their Young People’s Concerts. They have a wonderful Google Slide presentation created by Stani Dimitrova for the Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks that is really well put together. It includes both audio and video, as well as some fun activities for this very short movement.
In addition to these teaching resources, there are a collection of wonderful videos on YouTube. Here are a few of my favorites:
This is a video posted by Boosey & Hawkes and includes a scrolling score.
This video features the Baba Yaga & The Great Gate of Kiev movements and is performed the way Mussorgsky originally composed it - for piano. Cool animations of falling notes.
As a continuation of my post from yesterday, here is the Animusic version of highlights from the work.
Performance by the NYO USA at Carnegie Hall
I would be remiss to not include the amazing version of Pictures at an Exhibition by the one and only, Emerson, Lake & Palmer.
Finally, there are LOTS of teaching resources available for Pictures at an Exhibition on Teachers Pay Teachers. They range in price from $1.00 up to $80.00. I will admit that I’m not a huge fan of paying for teaching resources, but if you’re in a pinch and need some out of the box ready-to-go resources, this is certainly the best place to look.
I hope you find these resources useful! Let me know if you have some that you’d like to share.