Historical Musicology
The links between A-Level and Degree Level Music
Aims/Objectives
 To discuss what the main differences are between the
Historical Musicology course and Music at A-Level.
 My background.
 Layout of the Historical Musicology course.
 Assessment.
 How teachers might help students transition to a music
degree.
Dr Simon D. I. Fleming
 I teach part-time in the Music
Department of Durham University on
the Historical Musicology course.
 Specialist field: music production in
eighteenth-century Britain, with a
primary focus on the north of England.
 Doctoral thesis: music production in
eighteenth-century Durham City.
John Garth (1721-1810)
Dr Simon D. I. Fleming
 Over ten years of experience of
teaching music in schools and have
taught the AQA, Edexcel and OCR
courses in Music at A-Level.
 Teach part-time at the Queen Elizabeth
Sixth Form College in Darlington;
responsible for AS and A2 Music.
 I currently teach the OCR syllabus at
AS and A2.
Layout of the Historical
Musicology course
 Students have a weekly lecture which focuses on a
particular area of music history.
 In 2013/14 first year students have studied the 19th-century
but will be studying the 18th-century from next year.
 Example lectures for this past year include:
 Beethoven and monumentalism – Symphony No. 3 ‘Eroica’ and
Symphony No. 7
 Italian opera and the establishment of a virtuoso vocal art form
– Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi and the Risorgimento
 England and the choral tradition
Research-informed teaching
 At university, it is encouraged that teaching is ‘research-informed’.
 Research-informed teaching refers to the practice of linking research
with teaching in Higher Education.
 Professor Dibble, as an acknowledged expert on 19th-century British
music, has used his research to deliver the lectures on Stainer,
Parry, etc..
 For the concerto grosso, I draw upon my research on Avison.
 In secondary school there is little opportunity for ‘researchinformed’ teaching outside KS3 although many teachers choose a
topic with which they have the greatest affinity when delivering the
A-level course.
Seminars
 Each seminar group consists of five or six students.
 In each fortnightly session one work or movement is
studied in depth.
 There will be discussion about:
 The composer and his compositional output.
 Background to the work itself that places it in the wider
context of what else was being composed at around the
same time.
 An analysis of the structure, tonality, harmony, melodic
material, instrumentation, texture and any other features of
interest.
 Who or what were the main influences in the compositional
process.
Essays
 Essays are marked on a scale of 0-100.
 Unlike at A-Level, students at degree level should aim to produce a
publishable piece of work that includes musical examples, bibliography
and footnotes, with their own analysis supported by extensive
background reading and quotations from scholarly sources.
 They do not get multiple attempts at their assignments. Students are
welcome to ask questions before they submit their ‘summative’
assignments, but once marked there is no option to resubmit.
 To compensate, students get two formative assignments each year
which are designed to help prepare them for their summative essays.
They get detailed feedback with their mark to help them improve;
many also arrange tutorials to discuss their feedback.
 Unlike A-level, students are not expected to memorise their essays for
reproduction in an exam; as such this is more like mainstream
musicology.
Essays
 Example: Write an essay about cyclic form during the
first half of the Nineteenth Century with reference to the
fantasy, the sonata and structural compression.
 Students tended to choose, for the sonata, Liszt’s piano
sonata in B minor as this had already been studied in a
seminar.
 Hints had been given as to the importance of Schubert’s
Wanderer Fantasy but this work had not been studied in
any depth; students were expected to do the background
reading and analysis for themselves.
Oral Presentations
 Students need to give a ten-minute summative oral
presentation to their seminar group.
 Given a task in relation to a set work that they need to
prepare for and deliver.
 A: How does Mendelssohn’s admiration of the music of Bach
and Handel manifest itself in his life and in his choice of
musical genres?
B: Regarding Elijah, choose three contrasting movements
and guide the tutorial group through them, showing how
the music both evokes, and diverges from Baroque
templates.
Oral Presentations
 Students are expected to:
 Prepare a hand out or a PowerPoint presentation.
 Provide a bibliography and make reference to scholarly
literature in their discussion.
 Include music examples both in audio and in score.
An extension or a large leap?
 What is taught at degree is, in many respects, an
extension of what is taught at A-level.
 In assessment, there is larger gap between what is
expected at A-Level and at degree level.
What might we as teachers do to facilitate
the transition from A-level music to degree
level?

Encourage students, as they study their set works, to do the analysis for
themselves using the appropriate musical vocabulary.

Encourage students to speak out in classroom discussions.

Encourage students to use Sibelius (or other computer-based notation
software)

Use scaffolding theory and threshold concepts.

Utilise scores in your discussions and encourage students to annotate them.

Choose classical-based set works.

Encourage students to do background reading on the works they are
studying and listen to other related pieces of music.