Set works have been a staple in my GCSE and A Level music curriculum for some time now and I enjoy this aspect of my teaching hugely. Historically when planning the KS4/5 curriculum as a whole the set works have traditionally provided the structure, content and, to a large extent, the teaching sequence. There was something reassuring about working through each piece, identifying the key facts, learning the terminology and making sure students could recall the relevant information.
And, of course, students need to know these set works. They need to recognise musical features, understand the context, use appropriate terminology and recall specific examples. They need exam practice and the curriculum time needs to allow time for thorough coverage of them. And it takes time. I know music educators who vehemently eschew exam boards because they are too ‘set work heavy’. But I teach the Pearson A Level music course (the highest number of set works at KS5 I believe) and would argue I now spend less curriculum time teaching the set works than I ever have. To better results.
Over the last year I have consciously tried to spend less time teaching the set works as discrete bodies of knowledge and more time developing students’ understanding of musical elements, then applying that understanding to the music in front of them. To be clear, this isn’t the well trodden knowledge-versus-skills argument. But knowledge becomes more powerful when students can connect it, retrieve it when needed and apply it in context. Music exposes a problem with the idea that knowledge is entirely verbal.
The problem with knowing the answer
A student might be able to tell me that a piece is in a minor key, identify a sequence, define syncopation or recall the instrumentation of a particular set work. But can they hear those things? Can they explain the effect of those things on the music? (Ao4) Can they identify these same features in an unfamiliar piece? Can they transfer that knowledge into composing?
We have become very good at organising knowledge, displaying knowledge and testing the recall of knowledge. Knowledge organisers can be useful tools in that process. But a beautifully completed knowledge organiser is not, in itself, evidence of deep understanding. The question is not simply whether students can reproduce information. It is whether they can recognise when it matters, make connections and put it to work.
Don’t get me wrong,the set works still matter. They provide rich, specific examples and the detail required for the examination. But they become part of a wider musical understanding rather than the entire architecture of the course. So the use of curriculum time and planning for progression needs to be carefully rethought around this.
Knowledge has to travel
What does it mean to understand a musical concept if a student can only identify it in the piece in which it was first taught? Transfer is difficult. We cannot assume that students will automatically apply knowledge learned in one context to another. We have to teach and practise those connections. That means deliberately encountering the same concepts across different styles, genres, composers and musical situations. It means listening to unfamiliar music, comparing examples, explaining similarities and differences, and asking students to justify what they hear. Apologies to those who like a neat plan, but this also means accepting that this approach may feel less tidy than a sequence of set works, each with its own list of facts to learn.
Music is not organised into examination categories when we encounter it in the real world. Musical understanding needs to work beyond the boundaries of the specification. Composition is perhaps where the distinction becomes most apparent. Students can learn definitions, identify devices in set works and reproduce terminology in an examination. But composition asks them to make decisions. They need to understand how musical elements interact and what happens when they make particular choices. Knowledge of harmony, rhythm, texture, structure, melody and instrumentation needs to become available to them as a set of practical possibilities.
Every year, the Five Counties Secondary Music trainees begin their training with a deep dive into the different forms of knowledge underpinning music education. We explore the distinction between declarative knowledge, knowing that something is the case, and procedural knowledge, knowing how to do something. We also consider how these forms of knowledge interact with disciplinary knowledge: what it means to develop and use knowledge within a subject such as Music. It has made me reflect on how often our teaching focuses on what students need to know about a piece, and how deliberately we plan for them to use that knowledge elsewhere.
Composing requires knowledge, but it also requires students to deploy that knowledge through action, experimentation, listening and revision. The relationship works in both directions, too. Practical music-making can expose gaps in theoretical understanding, while a stronger conceptual understanding can make practical choices more deliberate.
Is this just a Music problem?
I wonder how far this extends beyond Music. In History, is knowing a list of events the same as understanding causation? In English, is knowing terminology the same as being able to interpret a text? In Science, is recalling a principle the same as being able to apply it to an unfamiliar problem? Every subject has its own disciplinary knowledge and its own ways of using it. The knowledge itself matters; understanding cannot float free of subject content. But perhaps the wider question is how we move students from acquiring knowledge to using it in ways that are meaningful within a discipline. I am wary of making simplistic comparisons between subjects. Musical knowledge has particular characteristics, not least because it involves sound, perception and practical action. But the tension between recall and application feels much broader than music.
In short, I haven’t abandoned the set works and I haven’t decided that knowledge organisers have no place. Both can be valuable. If we want students to become musicians rather than simply students who know about music, perhaps we need to spend less time treating knowledge as something to be collected and more time helping them turn it into something they can use. The set works have changed from being the organising principle of my teaching to being a resource for developing transferable musical understanding. And that now has to be front and centre when planning the music curriculum. I have made that sound a lot easier than it is, but from my experience so far it is much more freeing in terms of how I fit in the content. In particular with how I keep the curriculum driving onwards through period of disruption during mock exams and when on the home straight towards final exams.
Always happy to chat more on mrsgleedmusic@gmail.com
LG
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