Model Music Curriculum Key Stage 3
Links to extended repertoire for suggested listening.
Year Group
Year 7
This piece comes from Anoushka Shankar's album 'Traces of you' which was produced by the multi-instrumentalist Nitin Sawhney.
Indian Summer blends Indian classical textures with contemporary ambient production, creating a dreamy, evocative soundscape with no vocals or lyrics, and a seamless blend of Eastern and Western styles.
Sawhney adds piano, and his programming underpins the composition with gentle pulses and textural flourishes, whilst the sitar shifts between meditative introspection and soaring emotion.
The video features Shankar and Sawhney performing the piece live in 2013
Year 7
Described as both 'uplifting' and 'saccharine sweet' "Count On Me" was released in 2010. It has been described as 'folk-pop'.
It has a fairly simple arrangement of electric piano, acoustic guitar and bass guitar, with a little hand percussion and string sounds. All the instruments were played by Mars and his co-producer Ari Levine.
Year 7
Composed in 2001 for the first Harry Potter film, 'Hedwig’s Theme' functions as Harry’s character motif and as a musical embodiment of wonder and magic.
The theme’s haunting refrain is played on a celeste - a keyboard instrument containing metal chimes like a glockenspiel - giving it a particularly crystalline, magical sound.
This is joined by flurries from the strings and sweeping harp that emulate the rush of the owl's wings through air before the woodwind takes up the initial refrain.
The video features a live performance by Aula Simfonia, Jakarta in 2016
Year 7
The "Boar's Head Carol" is a 15th century English Christmas carol that describes serving a boar's head at a Yuletide feast. Of the several extant versions of the carol, the one most usually performed today is based on a version published in 1521 in Wynkyn de Worde's 'Christmasse Carolles'.
The ancient ceremony of the Boar’s Head Carol was performed for many years on Christmas Eve at Queen’s College, Oxford, but now on a Saturday shortly before Christmas, when old members are entertained at a ‘gaudy’ (a sort of celebration).
Steeleye Span perform the song acapella (in a similar style to their better-known 'Gaudete') before introducing a charateristic folk-rock instrumental section, which conveys the processional nature of the carol, employing brass, electric and acoustic instruments and rock drum kit.
Year 8
This is an old song that goes back to when the Royal Navy operated sailing ships that carried cannon, crewed by men who would have to climb and haul ropes that were often coated in tar for waterproofing and protecttion. Tar was also used for waterproofing the ship.
At a time when men wore knee breeches, sailors wore wide-legged trousers which were much more practical for their tasks, and these would become stained by the tar being used on the ships.
Before 1857, only the officers wore uniforms. Therefore, 'tarry trousers' were an obvious indication that a man was a sailor.
The song (which also gets a mention in Dickens' 'Dombey And Son') relates the story of a young girl who falls for the sailor's charms, and against her mother's wish for her to marry a farmer, runs off to be with him and protect him in battle.
This may sound odd, but at the time it was quite usual for wives of warrant officers (Bosuns, Gunners and Carpenters) to accompany their husbands, and they would help in certain tasks such as laundry, medical assistance and looking after the younger midshipmen.
The version of the song in the link is a 1972 recording by Frankie Armstrong.
Year 8
Red Baraat is a multi-ethnic band from Brooklyn, New York, formed by dhol player Sunny Jain, merging Punjabi rhythms with elements of hip-hop, jazz, funk and punk.
A baraat is a traditional Indian wedding procession accompanied by the rhythms of the dhol drum.
During these processions which can be very grand and lavish, the bridegroom travels to the place of the wedding (traditionally on horseback) accompanied by all the guests, musicians and dancers.
This live performance of 'Baraat to Nowhere' from 2012 shows the band's use of western instrumentation and musical stylings (including referencing the theme to 'Knight Rider' TV show!) held together with Jain's dhol drumming.
Year 8
French electronic duo Daft Punk are famous for appearing as mysterious, helmeted robots, and they have produced some of the most influential dance music of the 21st century.
Their music combines elements of many types of music - rock, house, funk, disco, techno and so forth. 'Get Lucky' is very clearly influenced by disco.
Indeed, the song features guitarist Nile Rodgers from the highly influential 1970's group Chic; the bassline (played by Nathan East) is very much in the style of Chic bassist Bernard Edwards, whilst drummer Omar Hakim has also played with Chic.
It is noteworthy that this song, from their fourth album, features a full group of musicians, whereas the first album was created and performed entirely by Daft Punk themselves. Any vocals were performed by the duo using vocoders and other effects to create the robot voices which can be heard in the middle 8 of 'Get Lucky' in place of a guitar or keyboard solo, and identifying the song as a Daft Punk product.
Year 8
This single from 1999 was performed by musician Norman Cook as the DJ 'Fatboy Slim'.
Cook had previously been the bass player in the group The Housemartins before forming the more experimantal, dance-based groups Beats International and Freak Power, as well as producing dance tracks under a vaariety of aliases.
Fatboy Slim emerged as a result of Cook having been persuaded to produce his own work in the style of music he was playing as a DJ at his club night - 'The Big Beat Boutique' which had also given it's name to the type of music 'big beat' - performed by the likes of The Chemical Brothers, Bentley Rhythm Ace, Basement Jaxx and The Prodigy.
Big beat is electronic dance music, evolved from acid house, using heavy beats, breaks and basslines, often distorted with more of an intense 'rock' edge, vocals or rap and the use of samples and loops from old records and spoken word samples.
'Right Here, Right Now' starts off with a sample from The James Gang's song "Ashes the Rain and I", fading in through a slowly opening filter and forms the basis for the entire track. The title comes from a sample from the sci-fi film 'Strange Days'. The rest of the music is produced by Cook, on bass and a variety of electronic instruments and software programming.
Year 9
This is a work in three parts - "Fast", "Slow" and "Fast" - by the minimalist composer Steve Reich for 'electric guitar and tape'. The 'tape' part features two bass guitars and ten guitars.
It was first recorded in 1987 with jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, who overdubbed the guitar parts. It can be performed live by a solo guitarist using a pre-recorded tape and adding the thirteenth guitar part, or by a multi-guitar ensemble.
Minimalism is a term coined by composer Michael Nyman in 1968 to describe music that features "limited or minimal materials... that use only a few notes... a few words of text... pieces written for a very limited instruments... pieces that move in endless circles... that take a very long time to move from one kind of music to another kind...".
With it's repetitive patterns, pulses, drones and evolving phrases, rather than telling stories or attempting to 'paint pictures' through the music, minimalism is more about drawing the listener into the music.
It is probably no surprise that minimalism emerged at the same time as a growing interest in Eastern pholosophies, trascendentalism and psychedelic drugs. Minimalist music can be very trance-like and cerebral. It has had an obvious influence on popular music forms such as German Kosmische Musik, experimental electronic music and subsequent electronic dance styles.
Listen to 'Electric Counterpoint' being used in dance music here
Year 9
'Crazy Rhythm' by Coleman Hawkins' All Star Jam Band was recorded in in Paris in 1937. At a time when America was very racist, many black musicians found that Europe was more accepting of themselves, as well as the music they played. Whilst in America jazz was frequently dismissed in the most prejudicial ways, European audiences appreciated jazz as a valid musical art.
European jazz musicians welcomed the opportunity to work with American jazz musicians whose skin colour was of no importance.
As well Hawkins on tenor saxophone, The All Star Jam Band featured fellow American Benny Carter on alto sax (who was also did the arrangement) plus French saxophonists Andre Ekyan on alto and Alix Combelle on tenor plus the highly influential Belgian guitarist Django Reinhardt.
Although it sounds rather old-fashioned to us, 'Crazy Rhythms' is important as it caught these musicians playing (and, signifiacantly improvising) at the cutting edge of 1930s jazz.
Year 9
In 1984, Nelson Mandela - the man who would eventually become the president of South Africa - had seved 22 years in jail, charged with crimes of treason for his involvement in actions to overthrow the racist South African government.
The song was written by Jerry Dammers, keyboard player in The Special AKA as a protest against Mandela's long incarceration and the South African government that still operated a system called 'apartheid' that actively discriminated against non-white citizens, and dealt with civil unrest in the most severe fashion.
Unlike many protest songs, 'Free Nelson Mandela' is upbeat and, singalong, that features South African influences in the rhtyhms and female vocals married to the ska stylings that the band were known for.
As welll as being an excellent pop song, the song was highly influential in raising the profile of Mandela's predicament and making younger people aware of the injustice of the South African regime.
Year 9
Described as "concertante work for alto saxophone, jazz drum kit, woodwinds, brass and percussion", 'Panic' was written in 1995 and is an example of late 20th century classical music. Concertante means the piece contains prominent solo instrumental parts, and 'Panic' focuses very much on the solo alto saxophone.
Unlike minimalist music, this piece attempts to be descriptive and expressive rather in the way Stravinsky did with 'The Rite Of Spring'.
Birtwistle has said of the piece: "I have called the work a dithyramb, in Classical Greece a choric song in honour of Dionysus, whose wild exuberance here runs riot. The soloist... is identified with the mythic god Pan... The title 'Panic' refers to the feelings of ecstasy and terror experienced by animals in the night at the sound of Pan's music.
The music is made up of dissonant tones, constantly changing, odd time signatures and arrhtymic drumming that conveys the feeling of chaos and violence suggested by the title.
The score has instructions to the players to vary the speed and dynamics as well as directions such as "till end of breath" and "very stricy and deliberate".
Birtwistle's music has been compared to the work of Edgard Varese, who also influenced Frank Zappa, and 'Panic' is reminiscent of some of Zappa's instrumental pieces.