St Benedicts School

Teaching a way of living

(Edexcel, First Examination 2009)

A Students Guide to AS Music

Assessment Objective 1: Interpret musical ideas with technical and expressive control and a sense of style and awareness of occasion and/or ensemble (performing / realising) Assessment Objective 2: Create and develop musical ideas with technical control and expressive understanding making use of musical devices, conventions and resources (composing / arranging) Assessment Objective 3: Demonstrate understanding of and comment perceptively on, the structural, expressive and contextual aspects of music (appraising).

Unit 1 Unit 2 Unit 3 Totals

30% 0% 0% 30%

0% 20% 10% 30%

0% 10% 30% 40%

There are three areas of study: AoS1 Instrumental music AoS2 Vocal music AoS3 Applied music AS and A2 AS A2 Western Music Tradition Vocal (with/without instruments) Dance, Worship, Moving Image

For each area of study there are set works which are published in the New Anthology of Music. Unit 1 Performing (6MU01) Internally Assessed 30% This unit gives students the opportunities to perform as soloists and/or as part of an ensemble. Teachers and students can choose music in any style. Any instrument(s) and/or voice(s) are acceptable as part of a five-six minute assessed performance. Notated and/or improvised performances may be submitted. The expected difficulty of pieces corresponds to Grade 5 for bodies including the Associated Board, Trinity Guildhall, Rockschool and the London College of Music. When students perform a piece at a level that exceeds Grade 5, additional credit will be awarded (see Difficulty Level grid) Unit 2 Composing (6MU02) Externally Assessed 30% This develops student composition skills, leading to the creation of a three-minute piece in response to a chosen brief. Students also write a CD sleeve note to describe aspects of their final composition, explaining how other pieces of music have influenced it. Each September, Edexcel will publish on its website a document entitled Unit 2: Composing. Section A: contains four composition briefs from which students will select one as the basis for a three minute composition. Section B: students answer three questions to provide information that could be used for a CD sleeve note to accompany their composition. Both sections of the examination must be completed under controlled conditions (15 plus 1 hours all supervised). A detailed, notated score; a recording (live or midi mock up); CD sleeve are all submitted.

Unit 3 Developing Musical Understanding (6MU03) Externally Assessed 40% This unit focuses on listening to familiar music and understanding how it works. Set works from the anthology provide the focus for the first two sections, through listening and studying scores. It is recommended that students familiarise themselves with each work as a whole, before learning how to identify important musical features and their social and historical context. In the third section, students use a score to identify harmonic and tonal features, and then apply this knowledge in the completion of a short and simple passage for SATB. Assessment is through a 2-hour examination paper in three sections: Section A: Listening (students to listen to extracts of music, skeleton score provided) Section B: Investigating musical styles Section C: Understanding Chords and lines (students may use a keyboard with headphones) Students are given five minutes reading time at the start of the examination and will not have access to copy of the anthology during the examination nor to any musical software for Section C.