BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY

Structure

Hero’s Journey

1. Ordinary world/Call to Adventure

2. Challenge (Mama piano ballad)
3. Guitar solo?
4. Road of Trials/Abyss (Opera)
5. Ordeal/Climax (Rock anthem)
6. Return (Outro)

In 2009, The Guardian's music critic, Tom Service, examined the song's relationship with the
traditions of classical music, describing its popularity as "one of the strangest musical phenomena
out there":
The precedents of Bohemian Rhapsody are as much in the 19th-century classical traditions of
rhapsodic, quasi-improvisational reveries – like, say, the piano works of Schumann or Chopin or the
tone-poems of Strauss or Liszt – as they are in prog-rock or the contemporary pop of 1975. That's
because the song manages a sleight of musical hand that only a handful of real master-musicians
have managed: the illusion that its huge variety of styles – from intro, to ballad, to operatic excess, to
hard-rock, to reflective coda – are unified into a single statement, a drama that somehow makes
sense. It's a classic example of the unity in diversity that high-minded musical commentators have
heard in the symphonies of Beethoven or the operas of Mozart. And that's exactly what the piece is:
a miniature operatic-rhapsodic-symphonic-tone-poem.[2]

- Classroom arrangement (vocals, guitar, drumkit, piano, bass, violins )

- Informal learning?

Motifs

- Easy come easy go, little high little low (He’s just a poor boy)
- Piano motif descending 2nd
- Desc bassline
- Sounds effects, word painting?
- Poor boy lyric, easy come easy go repeated
- Call & response/ question & answer
- Double time
- Guitar riff, sequences
- Full circle – intro/outro ‘any way the wind blows’
WEST SIDE STORY

- Mambo
o Links to Maria, Somewhere, march ‘Promenade’ comes back
o Tony and Maria’s waltz minuet
o Fig 72 – imitation/accents like clave rhythm
o Motifs – diminution/chunking
o Structure – call & response type sections
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- Cool
o Click
o Bassline/melody
o Diminution
- Somewhere
- Prologue
o Click – cool
o Tension – rising & falling, two themes
o Parallelism
o Dialogue/ vocal sounds
o Walking bass + ride cymbal/perc

MUSSROGKSY

Different characters of promenade

Students will learn about Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition by studying Ravel’s orchestral
arrangement of it. The listening and analysis will be mostly accessed through a wix.com website I create.
Students will be required to submit individual reflections on their analysis of the piece, mentimeter.com
would be used to create a forum for group discussion on analysis.

Students will learn a classroom arrangement of the Promenade theme. Once familiar, this will be used
as a vehicle for improvisation.

They will then be making their own compositions based off the same images as Mussorgsky did, with a
choice between 6 artworks that still remain available. This will be recorded online (using moodle, or
whatever learning platform the school uses) in reflections through submitted blogs.

Dance at the Gym segment – West Side Story

Students learn the main rhythm of mambo section

We watch the video

Learn and perform an arrangement of a part of it

Watch the video again

Draw out the story – who are our characters? What attitudes do they show towards each other?

Note how music can change mood/setting/atmosphere – zooming in/zooming out

Note use of motifs from other songs in the musical ‘Maria’

Note the use of mambo percussion/clave (hence ‘Mambo’) – contextual links

Bohemian Rhapsody

Use of informal learning by using a wix.com resource which will have all instrumental/vocal parts broken
down for each individual to learn and practice. Then the class will come together and play it all together.

Students reflect on the song – what did they like? Anything they noticed was unusual for pop genre?

Detail the analysis of ‘Hero’s Journey’ (English link), structure and varied genres within the song

3 x 6 groups?

Portfolio of composition diary