KSKS35 BBC Ten Pieces Secondary, part one

Jane Werry is a by Jane Werry specialist leader in education, and director of music at Hayes School in Bromley. She is an A level moderator for INTRODUCTION OCR, and a regular contributor to Music The BBC’s Ten Pieces initiative aims to foster interest in classical music among schoolchildren, with films to Teacher online accompany the two sets of pieces (one for primary and one for secondary schools). This resource is designed resources. to complement – but not duplicate – the many excellent resources that exist on the BBC Ten Pieces Secondary website.

It includes a cover lesson, and ideas for workshopping creative responses to three of the pieces: „„ Bizet’s Habanera „„ Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending „„ Bach’s Toccata in D minor

The second part of the resource will include workshopping ideas for more of the pieces, plus a homework project.

You may already have a DVD of the Ten Pieces film, but if you have not, each of the clips is available separately on the BBC website here. You can also download all of the audio as mp3 files.

COVER LESSON

This is the kind of cover lesson that relies on no specialist knowledge from your cover supervisor: the class simply watches the video and fills in the sheet as they go along. Depending on the length of your lesson, you might cover all of the Ten Pieces in one lesson (you would need an hour for this) or be selective about which of the pieces you want your class to study.

Whichever of the pieces you choose to cover in your lesson, include the final question where the students have to choose their favourite piece, and justify their choice. This can form the basis for a useful summary discussion when you next see the class, and may throw up some surprises.

Prior knowledge

Students will need some understanding of the families and names of orchestral instruments in order to complete the cover work. Part of the BBC resources for the Ten Pieces is a free interactive Guide to the Orchestra ebook for iPad, Android or Kindle. It may be possible to do some preparatory work using this.

If they have not covered orchestral instruments before doing the cover lesson activities, or require some revision, some time in the lesson will need to be set aside for watching some or all of the following videos, which introduce each family of instruments: „„ Woodwind „„ Strings „„ Brass „„ Percussion: a very brief introduction or a much longer and more comprehensive guide

1 Music Teacher February 2016 Adapting the cover lesson

Alongside this resource, you’ll also find aWord document of the questions shown here on the Music Teacher website, which you can edit as appropriate to cover whichever of the Ten Pieces you choose. Here, answers to factual questions are shown in green.

Students are bound to come up with questions as they watch the videos, and these are as important as their answers to the questions on the sheet. Encourage them to make a note of any questions they have as they go along: these can be returned to in subsequent lessons.

Some of the background information about the pieces is covered quite rapidly in the intro to each clip on the video: you may want to instruct your cover supervisor to make it clear to students that they will need to be very attentive at these moments.

In the questions where students are asked to describe the music (such as Q7 and Q8 on the Bizet), it is helpful to give a list of what to consider, assisting them with listening out for the right kind of features in the music and using appropriate vocabulary. Alternatively, these questions could be presented in a grid format, as shown on the Word document in the supporting resources.

Piece 1: The Ride of the Valkyries 1. Who is the composer of this piece? Richard Wagner 2. What are the Valkyries looking for on the battleground? Heroes to guard Valhalla 3. What is Valhalla? The home of the gods 4. Who are the Valkyries? Death’s cavalry/warrior women/grim reapers on horseback 5. Which section of the orchestra plays the main Valkyrie leitmotif (melody)? Brass 6. Which percussion instruments feature most prominently? Timpani, snare drum 7. Give three adjectives to describe the music.

Piece 2: Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra 1. Who composed this piece? Gabriel Prokofiev 2. Where does the composer get his samples from? The orchestra 3. What is unusual about the way the violins and violas are played in this piece? Held like a guitar and plucked 4. What unusual percussion instruments can you see and hear? A bottle, slapstick 5. How is this music different from ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’? Give at least three differences.

Piece 3: Carmen Suite – Habanera, Toreador’s Song 1. Who composed this piece? Georges Bizet 2. Who is Carmen? A gypsy girl 3. Describe Carmen’s character. Fiery, seductive, dangerous 4. Where is the story set? Spain 5. Who is Escamillo? A celebrity bullfighter 6. Describe Escamillo’s character. Proud, fierce, charming 7. How does the music of the Habanera reflect Carmen’s power over men? You could mention instruments, dynamics, tempo, melodic shape, rhythms, or anything else that you think of. It is slow, mysterious, rhythmic, with slinky melodies and dramatic changes of dynamics. 8. How does the music of the Toreador’s Song reflect Escamillo’s character?There is a heroic-sounding brass fanfare, a bold trumpet melody, the loud dynamics and marching feel make it sound dramatic and important-sounding.

Music Teacher February 2016 2 Piece 4: Trumpet Concerto 1. Who composed this piece? Haydn 2. In which century was it composed? 18th 3. In which country was it composed? Austria 4. Why was it important that the composer wrote successful music? To please his employer, who was a prince. 5. How many symphonies did this composer write? 104 6. What is a rondo structure/formation? The main melody keeps returning, like a chorus, but alternating with contrasting episodes. 7. How is the role of the trumpet in this piece similar to that of the turntable in the concerto for turntables? It has a solo role, the orchestra provides the backing/the soloist takes it in turns with the orchestra. 8. Which is the only percussion instrument that you can see/hear in this piece? Timpani

Piece 5: Symphony No.10 1. Who composed this piece? Shostakovich 2. Who was the dictator of the Soviet Union when this piece was written? Stalin 3. What was life like in the Soviet Union at this time? There was a lack of freedom. People feared imprisonment and the secret police. 4. What event enabled the composer to finish writing this piece in 1953?Stalin’s death 5. How does the music create a feeling of tension and fear? You could mention instruments, dynamics, tempo, melodic shape, rhythms, or anything else that you think of. Loud dynamics, clashing harmony, sudden changes, fast tempo like a chase, quiet sections sound secretive, buildups of dynamics and texture are like mounting fear.

Piece 6: Toccata and Fugue 1. Who composed this piece? JS Bach 2. When was it written? 1706 3. What instrument was the Toccata and Fugue originally written for? Organ 4. What is the difference between a toccata and a fugue? A toccata is an opportunity for the musician to show off and grab the audience’s attention. A fugue is a musical pattern with a melody that repeats and changes pitch and shape. 5. What order does the opening of the toccata go in – low to high, or high to low? High to low 6. What does fugue mean in Italian? Flight

Piece 7: The Lark Ascending 1. Who composed this piece? Vaughan Williams 2. What country was the composer from? England 3. What event interrupted composition of this piece? World War One 4. What is there in the music that represents the song or movement of a bird? You could mention instruments, dynamics, tempo, melodic shape, rhythms, or anything else that you think of. High pitch like a bird in the sky, soaring long notes, sudden quick notes and trills like birdsong, moving up and down quickly in pitch like a bird moving through the air, slow tempo and quiet dynamics sound peaceful. 5. Two of the other Ten Pieces heard so far have a soloist playing with the orchestra. Which word do they have in their titles that is missing from this piece? Concerto

Piece 8: Night Ferry 1. Who composed this piece? Anna Clyne 2. How did the composer start getting her ideas together? By painting a picture. 3. What does the music describe? A ship’s journey through a stormy sea at night. 4. What is there in the music that goes with the theme of the piece? You could mention instruments, dynamics, tempo, melodic shape, rhythms, or anything else that you think of. It has mostly loud dynamics with sudden quiet sections, like a storm raging and briefly calming down. Scales rushing up and down sound like waves or howling wind. Low drum rolls sound like waves crashing and thunder. The harmony is clashy.

3 Music Teacher February 2016 Piece 9: Requiem – Dies irae 1. Who composed this piece? Giuseppe Verdi 2. What language is Dies irae in? Latin 3. What does Dies irae mean? Day of Judgement 4. When do the events described in the piece take place? At the end of the world. 5. When was the piece written? 1874 6. This piece features something very noticeable that none of the other pieces have. What is it? A choir

Piece 10: Mambo 1. Who composed this piece? Leonard Bernstein 2. What Shakespeare play inspired this piece? Romeo and Juliet 3. What is the name of the musical that Mambo is from? West Side Story 4. Where is the story set? New York 5. Name or describe as many of the percussion instruments that appear in this piece as you can. Drum kit, bongos, maracas, piano, timpani, cowbells, xylophone, timbales, glockenspiel, vibraphone, guiro, tom toms, cymbals

Your favourite piece Which was your favourite of the pieces you have seen and heard? Give three reasons why.

WORKSHOPPING THE HABANERA FROM BIZET’S CARMEN

The aim for this activity is to create a collective response to musical ideas from the Habanera. Depending on the length of the lessons, and whether or not you follow whole-class workshopping with work in smaller groups, it may take one to four lessons.

Classroom workshopping springs from the Musical Futures model of music teaching, and plenty of information on it can be found on the MF website. The five principles of classroom workshopping are as follows: „„ Teachers and students construct the music collaboratively. „„ Students learn aurally. „„ The whole group contributes to the way the music turns out. You might find it „„ Performing, listening, composing and improvising are fully integrated. helpful to download a score or piano part „„ Students’ ways of learning and contributing musically may be highly individual. of Habanera from the BBC website for When planning a workshopping activity based on an existing piece of music, it is essential to identify the your own use. features of the music that are its defining characteristics. These will be the ideas that will be collaboratively developed into the class’s own creative response to the stimulus.

Teaching the characteristic features of Habanera

The musical features of Habanera that students will learn and then use to form their creative response are as follows: „„ The distinctive Habanera bassline pattern „„ Rhythmic variation „„ Chromatic scales „„ Major and minor „„ Pedal notes

Start by getting the whole class to clap the bass line rhythm together:

Music Teacher February 2016 4 Then use call and response to establish rhythmic variations on this pattern, by substituting other rhythms in the first half of the bar only. The pair of quavers remains unchanged in the second half of every bar, just as happens in Bizet’s original. Once this idea is established, go round the circle with each student improvising a rhythm for the first half of each bar, with everyone clapping the pair of quavers between.

Now you can add some pitch. You can use any combination of pitched instruments that you have, and if students have their own instruments that they can bring in, so much the better. Guitars and ukuleles can start off on a D minor chord, strumming to the same rhythm as the melodic instruments, who all play this pattern in whatever octave is easiest:

Once this is established, alter top two pitches of the pattern, changing the chord instruments to G minor:

Set up a pattern where the D minor shape is played for four bars and then the G minor shape is played for four bars. The final chord that is needed for the minor section of the piece is A7/D. The chord instruments can just play A7.

The A7/D pattern needs to go in the eighth bar of the sequence, in the place of the fourth G minor bar. So, the whole pattern is this:

Dm Dm Dm Dm Gm Gm Gm A7/D

In Habanera, minor sections are alternated with major sections. Simply by changing the Fs to F sharps, and the B flats to B naturals, and the chords to D, G and A7, this can be easily achieved. Agree hand signals to communicate ‘major’ and ‘minor’ to the class.

Bizet’s harmony uses chords I, IV and V in D minor and D major. It is well within KS3 students’ grasp to understand how chords are given Roman numerals to denote their role within a key. If you have done 12-bar blues or 4-chord pop songs with your students, they will be familiar with these ideas already, and having the terminology that the Roman numerals provides is extremely helpful in both discussing the music and understanding it.

Using these primary chords is one of the musical features of Habanera that makes it sound bold and strong. Knowing this will also make looking at The Lark Ascending – which is completely different in its approach to harmony and tonality – more of a contrast, and give students a deeper understanding of they way that both pieces work.

Now the accompaniment is set up, it is time to add some melody. At this point you can choose whether to play Bizet’s original melody, or launch straight into student-devised melodies. Either way, students need to understand and be able to play chromatic scales. There are many great YouTube tutorials that you can direct students towards to cover whatever range of instruments that you have. If you are using keyboards, this video is one of the most useful I have found. Students always enjoy learning how to use the correct fingers much more than I expect them to.

5 Music Teacher February 2016 Once the chromatic scale has been mastered, you will need to combine it with the accompaniment. Bizet’s melody goes in four-bar phrases, with the scale descending from D each time. You could teach it by rote in chunks, or alternatively give students a recording of the original piece to emulate by ear in groups.

An important part of this project involves students suggesting their own melodic ideas. Allow some time for students to try out some different melodic ideas using the descending chromatic scale, perhaps combining this with the rhythmic variations that were explored in the starter. Any particularly successful ideas can be shown to the whole class, and may form the basis for a ‘head’ section, that recurs during the finished piece.

Build in improvised sections, solos, or changes to the texture as you wish, being sure to incorporate students’ ideas at all points. Establish hand signals and visual cues for all transitions as you collectively build up the structure of your piece: a student could even be given responsibility for leading the piece. You could ask groups of students to devise their own section, and alternate these with everyone playing the head. Whatever happens, be sure to record your final performance, and perhaps perform it to another class.

Extension ideas

Work on Habanera could be extended into a project on tango. Habanera literally means ‘from Havana’ and it was an extremely popular dance style in the 19th century. In the first decades of the 20th century, Habanera rhythms – and some of the dance steps – were absorbed into Argentinian tango. A great tango example, which works really well in a workshop situation, and which uses the Habanera rhythm, is Por una cabeza by Carlos Gardel, famous from its appearances in the films Scent of a Woman and True Lies. There is also a great recording by Nicola Benedetti, with an atmospheric video.

In Por una cabeza, the Habanera bassline is used in a descending sequence. The shapes of the bass pattern vary slightly with the chords, which make them quite tricky to pick up aurally, although more able students might be able to do this with a reference recording. Most students, however, will easily pick up an adapted, more static bass line that simply moves down by step, but which retains the Habanera rhythm. Here is the melody, original bassline and simple bassline, together with chord symbols, transposed into D minor to match the Bizet:

Because the melody is mostly sequential, it is straightforward to teach aurally to a class.

Music Teacher February 2016 6 Ideas for how you could use Por una cabeza in your work based on Habanera: „„ Create a mashup of Habanera and Por una cabeza, switching between them in a structure agreed on by the class. „„ Add the idea of the descending sequence to the ideas already borrowed from Habanera (the bassline pattern, chromatic scales, alternating major and minor sections) to create completely new musical material, either as a class or in smaller groups. „„ New music could be created using ideas from both pieces, together with the Toreador’s March, to go with a story about a love triangle. „„ Compare Habanera and Por una cabeza in a listening activity: they both have alternating major and minor sections, but many other similarities and differences. „„ Team up with the dance department to create a cross-curricular response involving dance as well as the students’ performances and compositions.

WORKSHOPPING VAUGHAN WILLIAMS’S THE LARK ASCENDING

The Ten Pieces video is very effective in describing the calm, pastoral mood of The Lark Ascending. This is achieved through a set of ambiguities in the music, which in combination give it that sense of freedom and fluidity. Workshopping some of the distinctive musical features of the piece provides a great contrast to the rhythmic, upfront character of the Habanera.

The musical features of The Lark Ascending that will be explored are: „„ The use of pentatonic scale and modes „„ Improvisatory melodies with trills and flourishes „„ Use of a held major 9th chord as an accompaniment

You may wish to contrast Vaughan Williams’s avoidance of dominant-tonic relationships with Bizet’s use of chords i, iv and V in the Habanera – although both pieces use pedal notes. It is precisely this lack of primary chords, together with the added notes in many of the chords, that gives The Lark Ascending its distinctive floating feeling.

The best way for students to understand the features of this piece are from the inside, by playing them. However, links with the idea of a bird in flight need to be there from the start, so consider having an appropriate video playing on the board as students enter the room, and throughout the workshop if you like. This one, of a murmuration of starlings, is ideal, particularly as it is filmed in the English countryside, but ensure that the sound is turned down!

Start with the E9 chord that pervades much of the piece:

You could use instruments that have a sustaining sound, or use soft tremolos on xylophones, metallophones or the piano. If you are using keyboards, students could be directed towards one of the less harsh string sounds, or find their own sound that has the required calm feel. Build up the chord from the bottom, getting the lowest instruments to play their bottom E and then adding in the other notes.

7 Music Teacher February 2016 Students using melodic instruments can start with sustained notes and then experiment with trilling between two of the pitches. Guitarists could use an easy B minor shape, and finger-pick the sixth string with their thumb and strings 1-4 with their remaining fingers to cover all notes of the chord:

Ukulele players’ easiest solution is to finger-pick a Bm chord.

Then we will need the notes of a D pentatonic scale for the melody:

Model how to improvise a melody using these notes, making it flowing and covering several octaves if possible. Include a mixture of held notes and sudden flurries of shorter ones, to go with the movement of the birds in the air (return to the video at this point if this might help).

Ideally each student should have a go at improvising using the pentatonic scale themselves. Unless they are very used to this kind of activity, you might want to employ a couple of strategies to build their confidence: „„ Pick just three adjacent notes of the scale – F sharp, A and B, for example – and use those for improvising. Harmony Swap octaves when you feel ready. enthusiasts may notice that this „„ Give specific time for everyone to practise improvising together – this will sound messy, but ‘frame’ these is as close to a times with playing the E9 chord. Count 1,2,3,4 into improvisation time, and then 4,3,2,1 back to playing the tonic-dominant chord. relationship as Vaughan Williams gets: however, the Once you feel students are ready, you can nominate students to improvise individually while the others holding lack of a 3rd in the the chord – this could be done in a random order to keep them on their toes. You might get some good results B chord takes away by getting pairs of students to improvise in a call and response. the strong pull of the leading note, and the added 9ths and The next step is to make the music slightly more rhythmic, by introducing a rocking accompaniment in 6/8 11th serve to blur using two chords: the tonality further.

Students on the lowest notes should alternate between E and B. Others can choose B-A, F sharp-E or G-F sharp as they wish. Once the chord pattern is established, ask for improvisations – still using the notes of the D pentatonic scale – over the top. Keep your ears peeled for any ideas are strong enough to be copied by the whole class: if you can take one student’s motif and turn it into a head section that everyone can play, this will be of huge benefit to the overall piece. If necessary, you could invent a motif yourself that will fulfil this function, but it is always better to take ideas from students where possible.

Music Teacher February 2016 8 Agree on an overall structure for your piece with the class. You will need some sections with just the held chord as the accompaniment, and some with the two-chord backing. You could set a schedule for who will improvise when, or leave it to the leader (which may be you or a student) to pick improvisers at will. If you have a ‘head’ tune or main theme, agree a visual cue for this. Rehearse your piece and perform it.

Now would be a good time to watch the Ten Pieces video of The Lark Ascending. Questions to ask your class to spark discussion could include: „„ What are the similarities and differences between The Lark Ascending and our class piece? „„ What other ideas from The Lark Ascending could we incorporate into our piece? „„ How does Vaughan Williams’s choice of instruments compare to ours in terms of the overall sound? Which is more effective?

WORKSHOPPING BACH’S TOCCATA IN D MINOR

Students are bound to recognise the dramatic opening of this piece, and enjoy its horror-film swagger. Dive straight in with getting them to play the first phrase:

Tell them that it starts on A, and ask whether the second note is higher or lower than the first. If they know that the only black note they will need is C sharp, they should be able to work out the second bar by ear. If one student gets it ahead of the rest of the class, they can be appointed an expert coach, and can show their classmates how to play it.

Listen to the opening of a recording of the Toccata. Establish that the second and third statements of the opening melody are lower in pitch each time, and that the second has a different ending. Work out the pitches for the end of the second phrase, and then play the first three phrases, allocating instruments to the different octaves as appropriate. Experiment with going low to high instead – what is the effect? What about inserting F sharps to put it into a major key?

Now it is time to have fun with the huge, dramatic C sharp diminished chord that follows. You will need a powerful D pedal note, so agree on which instruments would be best to provide this. Then pile up C sharp, E, G and B flat over the top. Crescendo, and add any suitable percussion the class fancies – perhaps a cymbal roll might work well. Can the music stop there? The answer to this question has to be a resounding no!

Such a chord needs a resolution – and Bach’s way of doing this has real style. Over the D pedal, everyone else should change whatever note they are playing to either a D or an A (or both). The icing on the cake is what goes with this: the melodic part at this point is a strong G-E-F sharp, to finish on a resounding D major chord: you may choose to introduce the term tierce de Picardie at this point so that it can be referred to by name. Take it in turns to add this part, watching the leader for visual cues for each note. Agree with the class on what instruments sound best for this part, and then practise the whole piece up to this point.

9 Music Teacher February 2016 This section of the piece can be relatively easily taught by ear as well, and students will learn about sequences and intervals along the way:

Once they can play this, they will enjoy putting in the pedal A that goes in between each note:

This lends itself to two-handed keyboard playing, and some hand-crossing as the descending sequence sinks below the A can be great fun. Just how far can the descending sequence be extended before everyone runs out of notes?

This part of the Toccata has very interesting parallels with the opening of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells – also, of course, associated with horror films. It would be perfectly possible to learn to play that as well, and incorporate this into a Tubular Toccata mashup together with the opening fanfare and the diminished 7th build-up.

Music Teacher February 2016 10