A Christmas Miscellany
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KS3/4/5KS5 A Christmas miscellany Hanh Doan and by Hanh Doan and David Guinane David Guinane are the music team at Beaumont School in St Albans. As well as running their department, they’ve INTRODUCTION also co-authored the award-nominated Christmas-themed Music Teacher resources have become something of an annual tradition, much like advent books How to Teach calendars or leaving out mince pies for Santa. In previous years, there have been some fantastic, in-depth Secondary Music (Collins Music) and resources. Our resource, however, takes a slightly different tack, and comprises a collection of shorter ideas the OCR GCSE for the Christmas period. Music Study Guide (Rhinegold). We’ve tried to avoid the obvious, age-old suggestions, focusing instead on parts of a music department that might miss out on the fun that happens over Christmas. Part one of the resource will give you a range of ideas for adding some Christmas cheer to your exam classes, covering ideas for KS4 and KS5 (with a focus on GCSE and/or A level students). Part two moves away from the classroom and into your extra-curricular groups, with tips for managing your public commitments at Christmas (ie your Carol Service/concert/celebration), as well as ideas for your ‘non-flagship’ musical ensembles. We hope you find something useful in this resource. PART ONE: CHRISTMAS IDEAS FOR KS4 AND KS5 Christmas tunes at keyboards and singalongs in your KS3 classes is the easy way to add some festive cheer to your department. But what about students at KS4 and KS5? Surely they need forget all about the season to be jolly, and focus instead on important things like GCSEs and A levels? It sounds silly when you put it like that – to restrict access to festive music to our most passionate musicians. But how can we ensure that musical learning still happens when students (and most teachers) just ‘wish it could be Christmas every day’? This resource contains ideas for adding some Christmas magic to your upper school classes, while ensuring students are making meaningful musical progress and deepening their musical understanding. CHRISTMAS AT KS4 The following ideas link specifically to various elements of the GCSE courses offered by the three biggest exam boards (Edexcel, OCR and AQA). However, the ideas discussed could easily be tweaked to work for any KS4 qualification – just adapt the content accordingly. We wholeheartedly Christmasify your Areas of Study (OCR) apologise for the use of the word ‘Christmasify’. In the OCR GCSE course, the listening aspect is focused around Areas of Study rather than set works, and the vast majority of the AoS can be given a festive twist to aid revision or initial teaching, or to develop compositional skills. AOS5: CONVENTIONS OF POP ‘Run Rudolph Run’ by Chuck Berry contains all the essential elements of 1950s/1960s rock and roll: 12-bar blues, backbeat, improvised guitar solo, repeated melodic ideas, etc. 1 Music Teacher December 2018 A useful activity to aid recall is to have a track playing as students enter the classroom, and give them the length of the track to note down all of the track’s key features. Why not use a festive example of each ‘Convention of Pop’ during December? Here are a few suggestions: Slade: ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ (rock anthem) Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Wham!: ‘Last Christmas’ (pop ballad) Want for Christmas Justin Bieber: ‘Mistletoe’ (solo artist) is You’ seems far too obvious for the Bruce Springsteen: ‘Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town’ (rock anthem) main body of this Christina Aguilera: ‘The Christmas Song’ (solo artist) resource, and Run- Chuck Berry: ‘Merry Christmas Baby’ (rock and roll) DMC’s ‘Christmas in Hollis’ doesn’t fit neatly into an OCR All of these songs contain multiple key features of their respective styles which students could be asked about ‘Convention of Pop’. in the listening exam. Either use the note technique described above, or write exam-style questions using (Both are personal these seasonal selections. favourites, however.) RHYTHMS OF THE WORLD The rhythms of the world allow you to take Christmas tunes and implant them into the traditional music of another culture. As a performance task, it’s fun – and a great way to solidify students’ knowledge of key features in a particular style. Example briefs could include: Create a version of ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ in a calypso style. Perform an alap section of an Indian classical piece, quoting as many Christmas tunes as possible in your initial improvisation. Add obbligato sleigh bells to each Create a version of ‘Away in a Manger’ in a traditional Greek style, ensuring you use a time signature of 7/8. of these tasks for Compose a stylistic samba groove to accompany a medley of Christmas tunes, including stylistic breaks as maximum yuletide links between the individual tunes in the medley. cheer. These are just a few suggestions – you could create similar tasks to cover bhangra or Israeli dances, for instance. To do this properly, students require a solid understanding of the conventions of each style or tradition. The melodic material they use is essentially insignificant, but using Christmas tunes can be engaging and appropriate to the time of year. Our students tend to do most of their composition work in the spring term of Year 11, so this is a great primer for those wishing to compose in one of these styles. Related listening (AQA and Edexcel) If your exam boards focus on set or prescribed works, then careful study of those specific works is key. However, comparing these works to similar pieces by the same artist, or in a similar style, is essential to an in-depth understanding for students. I’m sure you have countless examples of related works for your students, but here are a few seasonal suggestions. THE BEATLES’ CHRISTMAS RECORDS Between 1963 and 1969, the Beatles released annual ‘Christmas records’ for members of their fan clubs in the US and the UK. They were seven-inch vinyl records containing messages, skits and songs, with a loose festive theme. As AQA’s prescribed works include three songs from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the most relevant discs are 1966’s The Beatles’ Fourth Christmas Record – Pantomime: Everywhere It’s Christmas and 1967’s Christmas Time Is Here Again!. The former, recorded in between sessions for ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, is a collection of pantomime-style tunes, while the latter is ‘concept-based’, as the members of the group play multiple characters in a loose plot based around several groups auditioning for a BBC radio show. Both discs provide some interesting material to discuss both the Beatles’ musical aesthetic at that time, as well as their ‘conceptual’ approach to Sgt. Pepper. Music Teacher December 2018 2 These records, though interesting, aren’t the easiest to track down. You can find extracts of them on Spotify, as well as various bootlegs on YouTube. The full set of Christmas records was released as a collector’s edition box of vinyl in 2017, which may be of interest if your department’s budget stretches that far. PROKOFIEV: ‘TROIKA’ FROM LIEUTENANT KIJÉ This Christmas classic evoking a traditional Russian sled doesn’t have an immediate link with any set or prescribed works in any GCSE syllabus. However, the use of ostinato as an accompaniment in this piece has a striking effect. When considered alongside the ostinato figures in the Haydn’sClock Symphony, one of AQA’s set works, this could provide some interesting contrast, as well as inspiration for use of similar techniques in student composition. In addition, listen to the track ‘Posada (Pilgrimage to Bethlehem)’ by Santana, and compare it to the tracks from Supernatural. EDEXCEL RELATED LISTENING There are many festive tunes that relate the set works on the Edexcel GCSE music course. Here are a few suggestions: John Williams: ‘Christmas Carol Medley’ from Home Alone Countless Christmas songs from the world of musical theatre: many of the classics (‘White Christmas’, ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’) differ in style to Wicked, but you could consider ‘A Christmas Song’ from Elf the Musical as a more modern alternative. Queen: ‘Thank God It’s Christmas’ Bach: Christmas Oratorio (discussed later in this resource) Purcell: ‘Behold, I bring you glad tidings’ At the time of writing this album is unreleased, but John Legend’s 2018 album A Legendary Christmas is set to feature a duet with Esperanza Spalding. As previously mentioned, though the examples above are related to specific exam boards, the principle can be applied to any music. Students need to understand musical features in depth in order to answer questions in an exam, or compose in a particular style. They must immersive themselves in music by listening, or even better, making music using these features. The overlay of Christmas content doesn’t change the value of these practices, but might increase engagement a little at the end of a very punishing autumn term. 3 Music Teacher December 2018 A KS5 HARMONY CHRISTMAS With Christmas at KS5, the scope is huge, and there’s so much potential for you to ‘get your geek on’ and demonstrate to students that harmony in particular is not isolated to A level study, but actually exists in real-life music. Whether your students are in Year 12 or Year 13, by Christmas, they will probably have the basics of harmony covered: chords, triads, inversions and even some basic cadential progressions. The Bach chorale THE BASICS Replace your weekly singing or analysis of a Bach chorale with a Christmas-themed chorale, or even a good old congregational carol to get your students in the festive mood.