Autumn Music, Autumn Writing

I had a great English 101 class on Friday, writing with a variety of music playing, and I want to record what we did.  I wanted students to write not only about the music, so I gave them apples again, with a prompt on the board:  Write a description of the apple; write about the view of the world from the point of view of the apple; write about the point of view of a human observing the apple; or write about anything the music inspires.  They were supposed to do some writing while listening to the music.

I also gave them a worksheet that had the title of the work and the composer/arranger/artist and the type of music.  For each work, they had two questions to think about and to write about:  What does the music make you think about in terms of autumn; how did you feel while writing with this music playing?

Here is the playlist, in the order that I played them:

"Autumn Leaves" by Miles Davis

"Season of the Witch" by Donovan

Autumn part of The Four Seasons by Vivaldi

"October" by U2

Autumn by George Winston (I let the whole album play until the end of class, so we didn't listen to the whole thing).

Some of the music was long-ish, and I was impressed with my students' ability to stay focused--and distressed about my own inability to settle into the music and listen.  I kept wishing I had chosen shorter pieces, but having a long piece of music was part of the point.

I collected the worksheets, but not the other writing.  I wanted them to feel free to write whatever they wanted for part of the time. Of course, that meant that some of them only filled in the worksheet.  I decided that I was O.K. with that, since they all appeared to be listening attentively.

I was impressed with the level of analysis that they gave me on the worksheets.  Several of them wrote about noticing how the music calmed them.  

If they remember nothing else from their first year Composition class with me, I hope they remember that music can be a resource for restoring mental health.