6 Pieces of Music which changed the world: follow up

This blog post has been on my todoist since the Summer, but I have just completed two book projects with my wonderful colleague, Dave Guinane.  The first one, completed in September, is the new OCR GCSE Music Revision Guide published by Rhinegold. On Friday night (yes, we know how to party), over Google Docs (it was so much fun), Dave and I put the finishing touches to our first draft of 100 Ideas for Secondary Teachers: An Outstanding Music Department. Both books are due for publication in 2016, and you can pre-order the 100 Ideas by clicking here.

You will see on a few posts below that I blogged about a potential project for Year 12s for the summer term, and I wanted to share some highlights of the work I received from my students this year.  The idea came from two dear friends,  Gavin Plumley (writer and broadcaster) and Alastair Tighe (now deputy head of Bedford School). As well as the usual performances, analyses and information handouts, we asked for a multimedia presentation, mainly because we didn’t want the students to stand there awkwardly reading out their findings directly from a powerpoint. Below you will see two videos which I thought were pretty impressive.  The student who worked on Tristan also grabbed a soprano in the year above and they had a go at performing the Liebestod which I thought was brave and impressive.  The student who worked on the Schoenberg truly went on a journey of discovery. Having been desperate to do research on the Palestrina, he took on the Schoenberg with some reluctance really enjoyed what he found.

There’s now a lovely display in my classroom (photo to follow) with QR codes to relevant videos and performances, two of which are below.  Enjoy!

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