For this Guided Listening, you will need the following:

A copy of these teaching steps
Text asset: Harry Somers, North Country
Audio asset: Excerpt from North Country by Harry Somers
All assets are provided below.

I. Identify

• Write the title North Country on the board and ask students to predict they might hear in a piece of music by this name.
• Listen to the audio asset excerpt from Harry Somers' North Country.
• Ask: What does this remind you of? If you think about camping or staying at the cottage, what does it remind you of? Do you think it is an accurate depiction of the flight of a mosquito? If you think it could be improved, how might you make it more accurate? Perhaps a slap sound?

II. Create

• Have students experiment making mosquito sounds first with voices only, then with any available instruments.
• Try creating your own class interpretation of time spent in the north country (using whatever geographic meaning those two words have for your class).
• Compare the class soundscape with the audio asset excerpt. Are there any similarities?

Text Asset: Harry Somers, North Country
Harry Somers (1925-1999), one of the many students of Canadian composer John Weinzweig, took inspiration from various subjects as Louis Riel, Yeats, and Zen. He was also inspired by the geography of his home province of Ontario. North Country, an early work, takes the ruggedness, tranquility, majesty, and energy of northern Ontario as its inspiration.

Excerpt I from North Country by Harry Somers (0:01:20)

Download (1.91Mb)

Somers' North Country opens with string glissandi and switches into constant rhythms with virtuosic flourishes.

Credits and Copyright

• Audio asset: Excerpt from North Country by Harry Somers
  1948, Harry Somers