Lithuanian traditional polyphonic songs, known as sutartinės, enjoy a distinctive and significant place in the world’s musical heritage. These songs are characterised by a distinctive musical language (narrow range of melodies; cross-rhythms and rhythmic syncopations; seconds between voices, archaic forms of polyphony), old texts and elements of ritual choreography. The musical language and performance peculiarities of Sutartinės offer a wide range of possibilities for their use in the music classroom, developing students' musicianship and music listening skills.

Aims: to introduce the participants to the Lithuanian polyphonic songs Sutartinės; to try out various ways of performing them; to demonstrate the possibilities of using them in the music classroom (including performance, composing, music listening).
The structure of the Workshop:
1. Brief presentation of the Sutartines' genre: features of their musical language and peculiarities of their performance.
2. Singing practice: with the workshop participants we will try out the archaic polyphony techniques of the Sutartinės: antiphony (call-and-response), drone, paraphony in parallel seconds, canon.
3. Creative activity: composing polyphonic songs according to the given conditions.
4. Active Music Listening: elements of the Sutartinės in symphonic music by Lithuanian composers (J. Juzeliunas' Symphony No. 5: The Songs of the Plains); Rock-Sutartinės’ karaoke.
5. Summarising the possibilities of using Sutartinės in a classroom; discussion and questions.

Presenters of this workshop hope that this genre of Lithuanian vocal polyphony will be of interest to music educators of other countries, enriching the class repertoire, opening up new experiences and opportunities for music making.

In improvisation, players are confronted with the unpredictable. The degree of the unpredictable, however, varies depending on the objective and style of each improvisation. In this workshop, I will introduce various improvisation prompts and concepts using practical exercises, followed by guided reflections to help participants make use of what they have experienced. This includes the question of how a concept or task can be adapted for different target groups. Here I draw on years of trying to find tasks interesting for beginners as well as experienced improvisers.
We will play improvisation games featuring body percussion and vocals and talk about how to transfer their principles to different instruments. After each improvisation, we will reflect on the didactic principles behind the rules applied. We will also discuss the question when it makes more sense to use non-musical cues such as texts, titles, pictures, films, etc., and when it seems more advisable to work exclusively with musical criteria, including reasons.
More general topics we will discuss are: The impact of improvisation in terms of decision making, individual responsibility for musical production results when improvising as part of an ensemble, developing democratic skills, dealing with mistakes, the potential of improvisation for working with big heterogenic groups, and the inclusivity of the games played throughout the workshop.

References:

Darling, D. (2011): Return to child..

Healy, D.J. and Lansinger Ankney, K. (2020) Music Discovery: Improvisation for the Large Ensemble and Music Classroom. Oxfort University Press.Heble, A. and Laver, M. (2016) Improvisation and Music Education: Beyond the Classroom..

Kanack, A. K. and Smolen, S. J. (2012): Improvising string quartets: Part of the creative ability development series. Company.

Sawyer, R. K. (Ed.) (2011): Structure and Improvisation in Creative Teaching..

Stevens, J. (2007) Search and reflect. A music workshop handbook..