Listening and appraising (analysis of set and unfamiliar works)
What the domain tests
Listening and appraising requires you to describe what you hear and to place it: instrumentation, texture, metre, tempo, tonality, harmony, cadences, form and style. Questions may use set works and unfamiliar excerpts. Answers must use musical vocabulary and evidence, not mood adjectives alone.
Core rules
- Identify pulse and metre first; then tempo and character.
- Texture: monophonic, homophonic, polyphonic or imitative, antiphonal.
- Cadences: perfect (V–I), imperfect (any chord to V), plagal (IV–I), interrupted (V–vi).
- Form: binary, ternary, rondo, sonata, strophic, through-composed.
- Style clues: continuo and terraced dynamics (Baroque); periodic phrasing and Alberti bass (Classical); expanded chromatic harmony (Romantic).
Worked example
An excerpt: solo piano, 6/8, repeated left-hand quaver pattern, right-hand melody in A minor; bars 1–4 end on E major, bars 5–8 end on A minor; a middle section moves to C major; the opening returns in A minor. Reasoning: repeated accompaniment means homophonic; half cadence then perfect cadence forms a period; C major is the relative major; the return of the opening suggests rounded binary or simple ternary. The 6/8 compound metre, not slow tempo, creates the lilt.
Traps
Calling any repeated accompaniment polyphonic; naming a cadence from the last chord only; confusing sequence (same level) with imitation (different parts); guessing composer from nationality; ignoring word-setting in vocal works; describing dynamics without saying where they change.