Music

Music Documents

“Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.”

Beethoven

Departmental Ethos

As a department, our intention is to provide a ‘Centre of Excellence’ within which our students can flourish, both in terms of their academic outcomes and their softer skills and from which our students can springboard; preparing each to potentially go on to study at a Music College, or indeed simply relish being involved in music making at KCC in some way.  We want our students to feel they have a safe and supportive space that offers them room to take learning risks and explore their self-expression and creativity, whilst awarding them the opportunity to develop as expert musicians via a robust curriculum.  Our bespoke curriculum maps, running alongside a comprehensive extra-curricular and peripatetic teaching programme, will all work to support this overarching aim. 

Implementation

Students will develop their overall musical creativity alongside more traditional theory-based and analytical skills throughout the course of Key Stage 3, allowing plenty of opportunity to develop strong keyboard skills to enable them to access the composing element of the course. All units taught in Key Stage 3 cover the three different areas of Performing/Composing/Listening & Appraising, as detailed below.  

Performing:  Our students will be given the opportunity to: 

• Develop a foundation of solid keyboard skills, enabling them in turn to compose with creativity and flair
• Perform both as a soloist and as part of an ensemble, in class and in wider concert settings, developing sensitivity to others within this context, and the ability to self-correct
• Reflect on peer and wider context performances, engaging critically in their responses

Composing:  Our students will be given the opportunity to: 

• Compose from a range of starting points, including in response to set briefs/a variety of stimuli
• Explore and develop compositional ideas and full pieces across a range of different styles/genres
• Create compositional ideas to reflect images and ideas, making perceptive choices around timbre and texture
• Listen perceptively to compositional ideas and offer critical feedback on the work of others
• Adjust their compositional ideas in response to peer and teacher feedback

Listening and Appraising:  Our students will be given the opportunity to: 

• Listen to music from across all manner of contexts and conventions, styles and genres, broadening their musical horizons and widening their existing repertoire
• Develop the ability to listen perceptively to music, communicating their impressions of the music they hear clearly and with appropriate musical terminology to justify their opinions
• Write expressively about music, using the musical elements and their constituent features to explain and evaluate the impact of the music they hear

At Key Stage 4, students will be able to explore their foundational skills further through the Eduquas GCSE Music course, and at Key Stage 5, students are offered the opportunity to create their own unique musical skill set, as performers, composers, and musicologists.