Building Skills using Minuet from Handel's Fireworks from Grade 1 Piano

1. What's included?

Aural 

This is a teacher resource to use with your pupil, in conjunction with the piece of music. This will not only help your pupil play this piece with greater understanding and more expression, it will also help with some of the aural tests in the exam.

Practice Play Cards 

An assortment of activities covering scales, theory, reading, aural, technique, composing, improvising, expression and posture.

Theory worksheet 

An activity sheet exploring all the notation and terms in the music.

Background on the piece of music

“The piece comes from a suite which King George II of England commissioned from George Handel in 1748. It was to accompany a triumphant celebration with fireworks, of the important peace treaty of Aix-la-Chappelle which brought a long war to an end."

On the following pages, activities have been suggested in a certain order. These lesson plans may move at a pace too quick or too slow for your pupil, so please feel free to amend these lesson ideas to suit your pupils' needs. 

2. Aural activities – teacher resource

Perform the piece of music to your pupil. 

After listening to the piece, discuss the following questions with your pupil:

• Does the music start loudly or quietly?
• Does the music end loudly or quietly?
• Listen as I play, can you raise your hand when the music gets significantly quieter?
• Is the articulation mainly smooth (legato) or detached (staccato). Or does it change?
• Can you clap the pulse as you listen to the music?

 Play the first line right hand only and ask your pupil to:

• Echo the rhythm (clapping) two bars at a time.
• Echo the pitch of the first line, right hand only.

3. Practice Play Cards

Each card provides an activity to explore this piece. You can use these in lessons or has as a homework activity. Put them into a random order for your pupil. 

4. Theory Worksheet

Here are some ideas you could make into a worksheet

• Test your pupil's knowledge with isolating notes from the piece, "can you name the following notes? Can you write the following notes?"
• Test their knowledge of note values, you might use flashcards or other resources for this already. The note values that are worth testing to support the learning of this piece are, two quavers, a crotchet, a dotted crotchet, a minim, a dotted minim, and a crotchet rest.
• Consider asking your pupils what the following terms mean; mf, p, f, rit.
• Consider asking your pupils to draw and identify the meaning behind the following; crescendo, decrescendo, slur, accents and ties.
• Asking for an explanation of the time and key signatures is always helpful. Can they write out the key signature for F major, and can they explain what both the key and time signatures indicate?

5. Downloads

Thank you for reading our resource on the Minuet from the Fireworks Suite by Handel. 

Download a PDF of the Practice Play Cards from Chapter 3.

What other ideas do you have to teach this Minuet? Share your thoughts on our padlet below. Revisit this resource at a later date to get further inspiration as more people take part in this activity.