Music

At Horniman we believe that music is a valuable, and non-expendable part of human experience.

We endeavour to reflect this in our curriculum by providing Horniman pupils with the opportunity to engage with, and play a wide variety of music.

We aim to develop in our pupils a life-long connection with music through: performance, composition, the development of a musical vocabulary, the teaching of instrumental and technological skills, and opportunities to reflect upon music from a diverse array of genres, composers and cultures.

**Curriculum Map**

School curriculum maps for coverage of Music
Music Curriculum and Skills Map

KS2 Lights Will Lead Me Home

Performances

Horniman Scratch Orchestra play

Avril 14th by Aphex Twin

Composition

At Horniman we believe in the importance of developing our pupil’s composition skills, allowing them to think like composers as well as performers/players. Below you will find a selection of compositions from our whole class and small group sessions.

Year 6 compositions - inspired by Steve Reich

In Year 6 we explore the work of minimalist composer Steve Reich, and his piece Music For 18 Musicians. Using Garageband, we learn about looping, quantizing and volume automation to recreate the precise interlocking ostinatos and the swelling crescendos of Reich’s piece. We aim to use similar timbres to Reich: flute, clarinet, strings, tuned percussion. Using software instruments and music editing skills allow us to think compositionally, focusing on arrangement and structure in a more zoomed out way. We started with a single clarinet note, and built the piece from there.

We also look at loop editing to emulate his use of phasing - where an idea will be duplicated across instruments with varied lengths, moving gradually in and out of sync.

Have a listen to Elder’s below. Can you spot the use of dynamic variation (crescendos and decrescendos) in the flute? Can you hear patterns that move in and out of sync? Can you here a moment of sudden change?

We loved what Birch class came up with so much so that we used some of these pieces to score the drama performance they devised about different experience of migration. We performed this at Lewisham Migration Musuem as part of a Lewisham Borough of Culture drama initiative, conducted by Peoplescape Theatre.

Year 5 - Delia Derbyshire inspired compositions

In Year 5 we look at Delia Derbyshire, the composer/arranger of (among other things) the Doctor Who theme music.

We explore the sampling techniques she pioneered at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

We then use iPads to record found sounds around the school and manipulate their pitch and duration to create our own sampled version of the Doctor Who theme tune. This kind of sampling technology couldn’t have happened without people like Delia Derbyshire.

Have a listen to some examples below:

Year 6 compositions inspired by Julius Eastman’s Stay On It (1974)

We listened for 25 *whole minutes* to Stay On It by Julius Eastman! It features a repetitive syncopated musical pattern (ostinato) throughout the majority of the piece - different layers are added and taken away.

We imagined it was a bit like being in a lesson at school - the ostinato was like what you were meant to be paying attention to, but other sounds keeps distracting you! During the piece, Eastman layers up lots of distracting ideas which are fighting for attention. Some of them are dissonant (an unpleasant harmony) or push against the rhythm of the main ostinato.

We imagined a noisy classmate fiddling with some stationery, or a friend humming an irritating tune under their breath. At the end of the piece - the tension builds and it descends into chaos. Maybe the teacher just asked you a question but…. you weren’t actually listening!

Listen examples of our ideas in the audio player.

Small Group Compositions

In Year 5 and 6 small group sessions, we improvise and compose based on key words and ideas from our topics. Our process is usually the same each time:

We improvise around these words or ideas, thinking about what they might sound like if interpreted on instruments. In doing this we generate clearer ideas of parts we might like to include. We then organise our favourite ideas into a graphic score - thinking about how our sounds might tell a story or create a mood, thinking about music in an abstract way with an emphasis on controlling sounds.

Finally we record or perform the ideas we arrived at from our improvisations. The final product is a semi-improvised / semi structured piece of music that features the golden moments from our improvisations.

Holly Class X LSO

Holly class composed a piece alongside players from London Symphony Orchestra inspired by Benjamin Britten’s Sea Interludes, and the ominous seascapes his music conjures up. Listen to their piece here: