Listening and Aural Analysis: Prescribed Works and Unfamiliar Music
The Listening and aural analysis component tests aural discrimination and the precision with which you can put it into words. Extracts come from the prescribed works you have prepared and from unfamiliar music you hear for the first time; marks are earned by audible evidence, not by biography, programme notes or trivia about the composer.
The vocabulary that earns marks
- Melody: conjunct or disjunct motion, range, sequence, imitation, ornamentation (grace notes, mordents, melisma, gamak).
- Harmony and tonality: functional progressions, drone or pedal, modal versus tonal, treatment of dissonance, parallel motion.
- Rhythm and metre: simple or compound, additive groupings (3+2+2), syncopation, cross-rhythm, ostinato, tempo change.
- Texture: monophonic, homophonic, polyphonic, heterophonic, call-and-response, layered ostinati.
- Timbre and forces: exact instrument names, including non-Western instruments (koto, sarangi, djembe, gamelan metallophones), plus articulation and production (pizzicato, flutter-tonguing, nasal vocal timbre).
- Structure and context: form, function (dance, ritual, work song), medium, acoustic or amplified setting.
Feature, evidence, effect
Locate the moment, name the device, then state what it does. Discursive mood writing earns nothing.
Worked example
Question: “How does the composer create tension in this extract?” You hear a 5/4 metre, a repeated quaver figure low in the strings, a long crescendo, a muted trumpet entering a semitone above the sustained harmony, then abrupt silence. Reasoning: the odd metre and ostinato give continuity with instability; the semitone adds dissonant friction; the crescendo and sudden cut-off manipulate expectation. A full-mark answer names each device, says where it happens, and ties it to the effect.
Traps
- Writing “the mood is sad and dramatic” with no musical features.
- Saying polyphony for heterophony, or homophonic for homorhythmic.
- Analysing only the first extract in a comparison question.
- Offering three vague features when the question asked for two explained ones.