Approaches to Classical Music

KSKS35 Approaches to classical music Jane Werry is a by Jane Werry Specialist Leader in Education, and Director of Music at Hayes School in Bromley. She is a Musical Futures INTRODUCTION Champion Teacher, and co-author of If you’re the kind of music teacher who sees it as part of their mission to open students’ minds and ears to the award-winning different kinds of music, you may well be thinking about ways in which you can introduce a bit more classical Being a Head of Music: A Survival music into your KS3 plans. Guide. There are likely, however, to be some questions that might be troubling you: My students might be resistant to classical music. How can I get them on side? I want to keep things practical, and don’t want to turn my lessons into a music history lecture or old- fashioned music appreciation class. How can I do this? For the sake of One music lesson per week is not enough to achieve the kind of fluency in notation-reading to tackle simplicity, the term ‘classical music’ is classical music. How can I use classical music in my lessons without using notation as a starting point? used here to mean any broadly Western This resource aims to give you some ideas as to how you can tackle these questions. It will also help you to art music from the pinpoint specific learning objectives that go further than just focusing on ‘doing’ some classical music. Renaissance to the present day. Learning objectives and the right balance of context You may be motivated by wanting to broaden your students’ horizons, and to make them aware of the wonderful world of diverse art music that exists. Although these are perfectly honourable intentions, it’s good to think in some more depth about exactly what you want your students to get out of studying some classical music. Any or all of the following may apply: Improved instrumental and ensemble skills. Improved aural skills. Practising using notation. Identification and understanding of musical features. Ideas for composing tasks. Knowledge of music history. There are many debates around what a KS3 music curriculum should include. You probably already have a viewpoint about where you see notation fitting in to your students’ work, together with your stance on knowledge about music (Beethoven wrote nine symphonies) as opposed to knowledge of music (understanding, through playing and analysing, how Beethoven’s music is put together) and knowledge how (how to play a minor triad). No music comes from a vacuum, however, and understanding some of the background to classical music is necessary, and can also be very interesting. The guiding principles behind the ideas in this resource are as follows: Sound before symbol: where notation is used, it is in a supporting role and is not the starting point. Practical music making is at the forefront of everything. Historical context and background support practical music making and understanding, but are not end-points in themselves. 1 Music Teacher May 2019 PLAYING BY EAR Playing by ear is a good thing to do with any type of music. Why? It forces you to engage with the music at a molecular level, thinking precisely about melodic contour, rhythm and structure. It is the ideal way of getting to know a piece of music from the inside. There are two critical factors in approaching this productively, though: metacognition and repertoire choice. For playing by ear of any kind of piece to be successful, it is essential to engage students with metacognition: thinking about their thinking. Be upfront about this by starting with a simple melody, with the express purpose of examining the thought processes involved in working it out. Something like ‘Frère Jacques’ works well for this, as it has a very simple structure, a small range and a good mix of conjunct movement and small leaps. Sing it first, and make the point that once you can sing a melody, it is in your head: playing by ear involves Keyboards and xylophones work getting it out again and putting it onto an instrument. Do a ‘1-121’ exercise (as shown in this video) to help well for this exercise, cement the idea and the feel of the notes within a major scale. This can be reinforced by drawing the relative but any melodic pitches of the notes in the air. instrument could be used. Thinking of the first note as Then, return to ‘Frère Jacques’ and get students thinking about the first phrase, which starts on 1. Working out 1 is a good way that the first three notes are 1, 2, 3 is easy. But the next note is a little more difficult, because it moves by leap. of incorporating Which of the numbers that we have already sung is returned to here? Explain that this is exactly the sort of transposing instruments thinking that will need to go into working out how to play a melody by ear. Perhaps go as far as identifying that alongside those the second phrase begins on note 3 before turning students loose on instruments. in C. Ask students to think consciously about their thought processes while they work out how to play the melody. It is likely that some students will be able to do it straight away: ask them to make sure that they have thought about how to articulate their thought processes in order to explain them to others later. ‘I just did it’ is not an acceptable explanation! These students could be tasked with working it out in a more difficult key, adding an accompaniment, or (if playing a keyboard or a xylophone) practising playing it as a round by themselves. After about 15 minutes, stop students and discuss their work. How far did they get? Which bits were the easiest/hardest? What processes did they go through? What were the best tactics? Hopefully, they will come up with the following: Break it up into small chunks. Think carefully about the ups and downs of the melody. Use trial and error: try things out, and your ears will tell you when you’re correct. Having gone through this process of thinking about how to approach playing by ear, you can now progress onto something slightly more complicated. One classical piece that works really well for this is Beethoven’s bagatelle Für Elise. For some reason students love it, and once they start playing it they don’t want to stop! Start by playing them a recording of the piece – or play it yourself. Ask them if they know anything about it – what it’s called, who wrote it, and when it was written. Then start to pick out the details of the first phrase of the right hand. It starts on E, with a ‘wiggle’ between E and another note that is close to it. Is the ‘wiggle’ note higher or lower? How many notes are in the ‘wiggle’ part? (Students tend to get carried away with this bit and put in too many notes.) After the ‘wiggle’, does the melody go up or down? Identify the shapes involved in the first four bars, and then that the next four bars repeat the first phrase, but with a different ending. Students have now done enough thinking to move onto instruments to start working out how to play it. Unless you have chromatic xylophones, this will need to be done on keyboards, or students’ own melody instruments, as there are D sharps and G sharps. Encourage keyboard players to use all the fingers on their right hand to play the melody. Music Teacher May 2019 2 You will need to plan for extension tasks for those who can do this very quickly, or have already learnt Für Elise: Those who work it out very quickly, but have not learnt the piece before, could go on to work out the next section, and/or add the left-hand part. For the first two phrases, you could tell them that the left hand outlines the chords of A minor and E; in the B section (from bar 9) it is more wide-ranging harmonically, and goes through C, G, Am and E. Students who have already learnt how to play the piece may not have learnt all of it, and could be tasked with working out the next unfamiliar section. If you have a particularly advanced pianist, who has previously learnt the whole of Für Elise, you will need to decide on an appropriate alternative piece: your knowledge of them and their prior learning will need to inform your decisions here. Lucy Green’s book Hear, Listen, Play! includes more on playing by ear, and includes audio for various pieces, including Für Elise, broken down into bite-sized chunks. Other classical pieces included in the book are Eine kleine Nachtmusik, a Bach minuet, and Brahms’s Symphony No. 1. There are also some specially composed riff-based non-classical pieces. The original Musical Futures resource pack includes very detailed information on the ‘In At The Deep End’ approach, in which students work out all kinds of music by ear in groups. From page 49 the resource gives details of applying the ‘deep end’ approach to classical music. 3 Music Teacher May 2019 SINGING CLASSICAL REPERTOIRE It is perfectly possible to find classical songs that are simple enough, in terms of range and technical demands, to tackle with your classes. However, this raises the question of exactly why you are teaching your class this particular song. Is it to work on singing technique, or part-singing? Is it to learn about the background to opera or Lieder? Is it to understand structure, melody and harmony, using singing as the first practical encounter with the music? Planning for what is straightforward, yet planning for why needs to underpin your choices about what you do.

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