Music Literacy and Aural Understanding
Why literacy is assessed in performance
Performance assessment includes literacy because reading and hearing underpin accurate preparation. Know clefs, key signatures, time signatures, and rhythmic notation including dotted values, ties, and triplets. Understand intervals (major, minor, perfect, augmented, diminished), chord qualities (major, minor, diminished, augmented, dominant seventh), and cadences (perfect, imperfect, plagal, interrupted, and the deceptive resolution).
Concepts to understand
Learn transposition (instrument transposition and octave displacement), scale and mode identification, harmonic function (tonic, subdominant, dominant), and aural discrimination (identifying intervals, chord qualities, and rhythmic errors by ear). Understand score reading at sight: scanning key, time, and pattern before playing.
Traps
A common trap is a question that presents a chord and asks its quality - candidates confuse diminished with minor because both sound dark. Another is misreading a key signature with sharps as major when it is minor. A third is counting a triplet as three equal notes without noticing the grouping.
Worked rule of thumb
For chord quality: count semitones between root and third, then third and fifth. Major = 4+3, minor = 3+4, diminished = 3+3, augmented = 4+4. For key: the last sharp is the leading note; the last flat is the subdominant. Rule: read the signature before the notes, and hear the cadence before naming the key.