Edexcel’s GCSE specification for examination in 2018 includes a new Area of Study, AoS3: Music for stage and screen, which features two big hits from Hollywood and Broadway. This resource gives a...
Jonathan James Secondary education
This resource draws on the techniques of an ‘animateur’ (workshop leader) and puts them in the context of the curriculum, considering practical ways to approach features in all eight of the set works...
Jonathan James Secondary education
As a teacher, Olivier Messiaen taught many of the figures who became giants in the post-war avant-garde – among them Boulez, Stockhausen and Xenakis. And as a composer, he sits on a line from Debussy...
David Kettle Secondary education
Many music departments include modules on minimalism in their KS3 and KS4 schemes of work. A contemporary musical style that uses simple repetitive diatonic phrases with catchy rhythms and engaging...
David Ashworth Secondary education
In part one of this two-part jazz resource (Music Teacher, March 2017), we traced how jazz evolved from humble beginnings as a folk music into being the mainstream popular music of its day. By 1945,...
Jonathan James Secondary education
In this resource, I give advice on how to tackle the background to the topic, recommend some online resources, and provide a ‘way in’ to the music itself, including specific works that could be...
Jane Werry Secondary education
Of all the Areas of Study for the 9-1 OCR GCSE, AoS5 on Conventions of Pop is likely to be the one where students already have at least some familiarity with the music. However, although they may...
Jane Werry Secondary education
Students are studying Debussy's Estampes and the other set works in preparation for a summer Edexcel exam paper either at AS or A Level. A previous Music Teacher resource (January 2017) has already...
Simon Rushby Secondary education
Jazz is an important area of study for A level across several of the boards. This first part traces jazz history from its ‘raggedy’ beginnings in the 1890s through to the gloss and sophistication of...
Jonathan James Secondary education
‘It was 20 years ago today…’ sang the Beatles on the opening track of their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. And it is now actually 50 years ago that they first sang these words. So it's a...
David Ashworth Secondary education
Courtney Pine's album Back in the Day was released in 2000, and is one of the set works that both AS and A Level students have to study as part of Edexcel's Area of Study 4: Popular Music and Jazz.
Simon Rushby Secondary education
It's an odd pairing at first glance: Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 (covered in its own Music Teacher resource, February 2016) with Kodály's Dances of Galánta. And yet these prescribed works for...
Jonathan James Secondary education