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Valencian Community PAU Music Analysis II study materials
Valencian Community PAU Music Analysis II study resources

Valencian Community PAU Music Analysis II: Score commentary and guided listening: contextualization, formal segmentation and stylistic identification

Valencian Community PAU Music Analysis II · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

All guide sections

Score commentary and guided listening: contextualization, formal segmentation and stylistic identification

What this domain tests

This is the essay-style part: you must convert an unseen score or a listening excerpt into an organised commentary. The exam rewards a repeatable method - identify, segment, justify, contextualise - not a mood description.

The method, in order

  1. Identification: composer, title, genre, approximate date. If unnamed, infer from forces, notation and style and say so explicitly ("per la plantilla i el xifrat, obra barroca").
  2. Basic data: compàs and subdivision, tempo, key (and mode), àmbit, performing forces.
  3. Segmentation: letter the sections (A, B, A'), always with compassos, for example "A: cc. 1-8; B: cc. 9-24; A': cc. 25-32".
  4. Justification: each boundary needs evidence - a cadence (semicadència, autèntica perfecta), a new theme, a texture change, a new key.
  5. Style: texture, harmonic language, phrasing, ornamentation, dynamics.
  6. Contextualisation: genre conventions, function (liturgical, courtly, concert), and what the features reveal about the period.

Guided-listening variant

When the task is a listening map, give timings or bar numbers with what enters: "0:00 tema al violí; 0:12 resposta al baix; 0:24 episodi modulant". Name the parameter that changes at each point (timbre, texture, dynamics, key).

Worked example

A 32-bar piece in a major key: cc. 1-8 close on V; cc. 9-16 repeat the opening material with a perfect authentic cadence in the tonic; cc. 17-24 introduce new melodic material and cadence in the relative minor; cc. 25-32 bring back the opening eight bars over a tonic pedal with a short coda. Model segmentation: A (1-8, semicadència) - A' (9-16, cadència autèntica perfecta) - B (17-24, modulation to the relative minor) - A'' (25-32, tonic pedal and coda). Conclusion: rounded binary or ternary with a contrasting middle section, depending on whether A'' is complete - here it is complete, so ternary.

Traps that cost marks

  • Writing about atmosphere with no bar numbers or cadences.
  • Describing the form without naming the key of each section.
  • Confusing a local tonicisation with the global key.
  • Ignoring the text in vocal works, where the words usually explain the musical gesture.
  • Mixing the language of the exam version with a different one inside the same answer.