KSKS35 Approaches to classical

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’ someclassical 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.

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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, 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.

Here is an example of how you could use singing a classical piece as the starting point for wider learning. The piece chosen here is the ‘Toreador’s Song’ from Bizet’s Carmen, but you could, of course, choose different repertoire.

Aim Activity and key questions Learning points Focused listening and Watch/listen to a performance of The music is loud and has four beats in a bar. In the verse, familiarity with style. the ‘Toreador’s Song’. Discuss there is a repeated rhythm in the accompaniment, which Making connections the musical dimensions and together with the brass instruments and flourishes, add to between the music and characterisation: what kind of the feeling of Escamillo’s confidence and charisma. When the characterisation. character is Escamillo, and how music goes from minor to major in the chorus, he sings more is this reflected in his music? How quietly, as though he has the confidence to get his audience does the music change from the into the palm of his hand. The chorus then repeats what he verse into the chorus? This is has sung, showing that they are his admirers. The differences from an opera – in what ways is between opera and musical theatre are a huge and fertile the music different from that in a topic for discussion. There are exceptions to every possible musical? rule that students might come up with, but it boils down to singing technique – opera singers do not use microphones, but musical theatre singers do. Singing with good Work on singing the chorus, either Opera singers project over an orchestra by maximising the technique and a sense in English or in French. You may higher frequencies of each note, which takes a lot of training. of style. need to change the key to find one However, other aspects of technique that can be focused on that is comfortable for students. E immediately include conserving breath so none is lost in a flat (a tone lower than the original) breathy sound. Get students to focus their tone by increasing may be a good place to start. Work the ‘twang’ in the voice. This can be achieved by doing some on posture, diction, projection and of the exercises above that involve an ‘ng’ sound, or quacking/ control, especially on the long meowing. Another important part of projection is enunciating high note. How can we emulate an words clearly, exaggerating each consonant, but making sure operatic style? How can we convey every vowel sound is as long as possible. Escamillo’s character? Performing the melody, Using available instruments, learn Chord I in F major starts and ends the chorus. Chord I (with a bassline and chords how to play the melody, chords, bassline made from the root and the 5th to give a march-like from conventional and bassline (using notes from the feel) is established for two bars at the start. In the middle there notation (shown below), chords to create it), for the chorus of is a much wider range of chords, which change more quickly, or a combination of the ‘Toreador’s Song’. as different keys are touched upon. When F major returns at by ear and using the Extension: where are chords V and the end, there is chord V just before it – a perfect cadence to notation as a prompt. I in F major used? Where do we re-establish the key. Extension: need to use notes from outside the understanding chords scale of F major? How frequently do within a key, and the the chords change? effect of harmonic rhythm. Ensemble performance Put together small-group Students can play to their strengths here, singing and/or combining singing and performances of the chorus of the playing as suits their abilities, or be encouraged to take a instruments. ‘Toreador’s Song’. challenge and develop a weaker skill.

Music Teacher May 2019 4 WHOLE-CLASS INSTRUMENTAL PERFORMANCE

Whole-class performance naturally gives great opportunities for differentiation: if there are different parts, you can find something to suit everyone’s level. However, this is also where it becomes impossible to ignore the elephant in the room: notation.

Every music teacher has their own ideas on notation, but as Martin Fautley eloquently points out in this article, there is a big difference between note-naming and reading music. Becoming fluent in reading music takes time and practice, and usually goes hand-in-hand with learning an instrument. If this is the main thrust of your KS3 music programme, then you may achieve it. However, most KS3 curricula try to cover a broad range of things, and if this is the case, you are unlikely to have the time or opportunity to include the practice that fluent music-reading requires.

One thing that you can do is use a simple melody as a stepping-stone from note-naming to something closer to fluent music-reading. The melody from the ‘Toreador’s Song’ above is a good example to use, because it is so memorable, especially if you are acquainted with it through singing before attempting to play it. Teach or reinforce the notes of the lines and spaces using your preferred method, and then ask the class to use the notation to help them perform the melody. Getting them to think carefully about the ups and downs of the melody, by drawing the shape in the air as they sing, is always useful in making that link between the aural and visual concepts of up and down. Do not let students write down the note-names and play from them: explain that, although it might make things easier, it gets in the way of practising reading the notes and moving towards fluency.

If you do have instrumentalists in your class with any level of fluency in music-reading, you need look no further than the excellent BBC Ten Pieces arrangements. These are extremely comprehensive, and offer parts for all instruments at three different levels: beginner/pre-grade 1, grades 1-3, and grades 4-5, which can be used in whatever combination you need. There are also backing tracks to help. If you use ocarinas, there are also excellent ocarina arrangements which include four-hole fingering charts.

It is also worth investigating the Musical Futures Just Play resources. There are four classical pieces available: ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’, the minuet from Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Für Elise and Pachelbel’s Canon. These are presented as playalongs with chord diagrams for guitar, ukulele and keyboard, together with bass guitar tab. The playalong for ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ includes versions at slow and fast , with and without the accelerando. You can see a sample of this playalong video here. This particular playalong was designed to fit with the BBC Ten Pieces arrangements, so you could put together a bespoke arrangement

5 Music Teacher May 2019 for your class, with any music-reading instrumentalists catered for with a Ten Pieces part, and everyone else playing along with the chords.

On the topic of video playalongs, it’s definitely worth checking out the Musication YouTube channel. This has very clear playalong videos for a range of tunes, that include some classical ones such as Eine kleine Nachtmusik, ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’, and ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’. Some are for unpitched percussion, with symbols that you assign to the instruments that you are using, and some are for Boomwhackers, although these could be used for other pitched instruments.

If you feel that these playalongs do not offer enough challenge for your students, it’s possible to use them as a starting point for some hybrid playalong/aural work. This is where classroom workshopping might come in.

CLASSROOM WORKSHOPPING

Classroom workshopping involves whole-class performing linked to aural work. In order to facilitate any kind of classroom workshopping, the teacher needs to be very clear about their aims. If you want to run a classroom workshop based on a classical piece, you first need to determine which features of the piece you want students to learn about. It is these, rather than a faithful reproduction of the original piece, that will form the basis for your workshop.

Let’s use Eine kleine Nachtmusik as an example. There is a simple piano arrangement of it here that gives us the main ideas in an abbreviated form, and that gives us more than enough material to build a classroom workshop. The learning that could be extracted from workshopping Eine kleine Nachtmusik might include: „„ Mozart uses mainly tonic and dominant (7th) chords „„ Melodies are often constructed from chord notes. „„ Melodies often go in question-and-answer pairs. „„ Although the range of chords is small, the harmonic rhythm varies to stop it becoming too predictable.

It’s essential to understand that what happens in a classroom workshop will be different every time, even if the stimulus material and aims are identical. The idea is to facilitate a co-created piece of music with your class. The outcome is impossible to predict. This can be scary at first, and you need to have a clear idea about where you’re going, but practice does make this kind of working easier as you do it more.

You can use any combination of instruments, as long as most of them are pitched. Students’ own instruments can be incorporated, alongside whatever classroom instruments you have.

Your starting points can be quite structured, though, and there are a few essentials to bear in mind. It could start like this: „„ Get everyone organised in a broadly circular arrangement. You need to be in the middle, as you need to be able to be seen and to monitor what everyone is doing. „„ Establish a pulse to keep everyone together. You might feel that this is a very un-classical thing to do, but giving a solid foundation for playing in time is essential. It is the spirit of Eine kleine Nachtmusik that we are capturing, rather than the small print of classical conventions. The pulse could be kept by a reliable student on a cowbell, djembe or drumkit, or even a recorded beat if that is easier. „„ Agree on visual signals for stopping and starting to play: this is absolutely crucial. The pulse can keep going throughout. „„ Set up an alternating tonic-dominant pattern, with two bars of each. Eine kleine Nachtmusik is in G major, which is a good key for keyboards, ukuleles and guitars. On the bass guitar, G and D are both open strings, so even an absolute beginner can play along. Start with root notes only, so two bars of G followed by two bars of D. Assist any students using transposing instruments to find the right pitches. Then, for instruments that can play chords, add in the other notes so that two bars of a G chord are followed by two bars of D7. Single-line instrumentalists can be challenged to make patterns using notes of the chords. „„ Using call and response, get everyone playing the chords/chord patterns using the rhythm of the opening two bars of Eine kleine Nachtmusik. „„ Again using call and response, model on an instrument Mozart’s actual melody for the first four bars of Eine kleine Nachtmusik, and get students to copy it.

Music Teacher May 2019 6 The next bit is where things might start to take different routes. At every point, be open to students’ own ideas, even if they take things in unexpected directions. „„ Ask students to make new chord-note patterns, still using G and D7 chords and Mozart’s original rhythm. Give them time to work things out on their instruments, keeping an ear out for what’s happening around the circle. Take volunteers to show what they’ve come up with, and where appropriate, ask students to copy particularly effective patterns. „„ Get students to consider the ways in which Mozart’s phrases sound like a question and answer. The most basic of these is the rising shape of the first phrase, which justfeels like a question, and the falling shape of the answer. Can students reproduce this idea with their own melodies? Can they start to introduce any other notes into their melodies without disturbing the tonic-dominant feel? „„ Begin to put together a performance with a mixture of Mozart’s actual Eine kleine Nachtmusik melodies and students’ own patterns. Mix up the texture, so that it includes some tutti and some solos, and perhaps even some sections with just the rhythm section and/or root notes. „„ Experiment with varying the harmonic rhythm, starting (as Mozart does) by switching from two bars per chord to one bar. Add this into your performance, discussing along the way the effect that this has on the music. „„ If possible, add some more chords into the piece. The first non-tonic or dominant chords that Mozart introduce are Am and C (ii and IV within the key of G major). You could go with this, or ask students to try different chords out and make suggestions for everyone to try. This in itself is a valuable exercise in learning about which chords sound ‘right’, unexpected, or just out of place: students are acquiring nitty- gritty theoretical knowledge about harmony in the most practical and direct way.

This is likely to take more than one lesson to accomplish. Remembering what happened (especially if you teach multiple classes) will be a challenge, so make sure that you record the end-point of a lesson so that you can refer back to it and unpick it when revisiting the workshop next time.

Your finished performance might have a predetermined structure that has agreed on by the class, or it might have a more spontaneous structure directed by you using a range of agreed visual cues.

There are many directions that this might go after the basic classroom phase has been done: „„ Invite students to direct the performance using the agreed set of visual cues. „„ Take suggestions as to what other ideas might be incorporated into the piece. Try these out, and discuss which ones still ‘sound classical’ – or not – and establish why this is. „„ Listen to another classical piece, and identify which features are the same or different. „„ Small-group work following the same lines as the classroom workshop, reproducing the same features of Eine kleine Nachtmusik or taking them further into something more creative.

7 Music Teacher May 2019 WIDER LISTENING: A HOMEWORK PROJECT

You may want to use homework as an opportunity to get students to listen to a wider range of music without taking up lesson time. A good way of doing this is to set tasks using a standard set of questions that can be applied to any piece of music. You could set the questions and collect responses using Google forms, Microsoft forms, or any other electronic means that fits with your school’s system. The great thing about this is being able to compile students’ responses in one place, making marking as painless as possible.

One way of keeping this kind of listening as conceptually tight as possible is to have a mnemonic to help students organise their thoughts about musical elements. ‘Mad t-shirt’ is one of these:

One selection of pieces can be found here. Not all these pieces are classical, and you may not agree with ‘Dr Smith’ is another similar one. Whichever you choose, the aim is to create a full description of a piece of the choices, but it is music by working through the elements. You might ask students to listen to a particular piece, or give them a a starting point for choice from a selection. wider listening.

Draw up a list of questions that fit with each element, and could be used with any piece of music. Your list might look something like this: 1. Melody: listen to the main melody of the piece. Is the register high or low? 2. Melody: listen to the main melody of the piece. Is the range wide or narrow? 3. Melody: is the movement of the main melody mostly steps or mostly leaps? 4. Melody: does the main melody include ornaments? 5. Articulation: are the majority of notes played staccato or ? 6. Dynamics: what are the dynamics at the start of the piece? 7. Dynamics: describe the first change of dynamics in the piece. 8. Time/: describe the tempo of the piece. 9. Time/tempo: how many beats in a bar are there? 10. Structure: what distinct sections does the piece have? 11. Harmony: is the piece mostly in a major or a minor key? 12. Harmony: is the harmony mostly dissonant or consonant? 13. Instruments: what instruments can you hear in the piece? 14. Rhythm: can you hear any rhythmic ostinatos in the piece? Describe what instrument(s) is/are playing it/them. 15. Rhythm: are most of the even or uneven? 16. Texture: listen to the different layers of sound in the piece. Describe whether the texture is thick or thin, and how this changes as the piece progresses.

Music Teacher May 2019 8 Once you have your questions in the format of an online quiz or Google form, you have a ready-made listening homework that can be administered at any time for any piece of music. Doing this exercise gets students listening actively to unfamiliar music at the same time as consolidating their knowledge of musical terms and elements, paving the way for KS4 study.

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