Composition Project Aims

 

This project has four stages of work designed for teachers to initiate composition in the classroom, based on the compositional techniques of Pierre Boulez.

It should be seen as a guide and is set out in the form of a practical composition project intended for Key Stage 3 pupils of mixed musical ability.

The project assumes that the class size is somewhere between 4 - 40 and that four or five teaching sessions are available.

The four elements are linked and go some way towards producing a substantial composition at the end of the course. However each individual teacher may want to modify the exercises and tasks set to suit the needs of his or her pupils.

Aims

1. To promote the pupils' understanding and interest in composition through the music of Pierre Boulez.

 

2. To increase the pupils' knowledge of composing techniques of the European Avant Garde.

 

3. To develop the pupils' skills in handling harmony, texture, colour and serial techniques in composition.

 

4. To enable the pupils to find a vocabulary to discuss Boulez's music, contemporary music, and its influences, placing them all in some kind of cultural context through critical appraisal.

 

5. To create and perform a composition using the techniques covered and to record the result onto audio tape.