Teachers and students can jointly deconstruct and analyse a musical work by using literal, inferential and evaluative questions. The three types of questions help to scaffold students' listening and their analysis and interpretation of the piece.
The example below uses Australian composer Nigel Westlake's 'The Last Place on Earth' – movement No 1 from The Antarctica Suite (1991).
- The teacher introduces the selected musical work and plays it/shows it to the class.
- The teacher asks the students literal questions such as:
- What do you hear? What did you notice first and why?
- What elements of music stand out to you? Which elements of music does this composition pay attention to over other elements? (for rhythm, timbre)
- The teacher leads a discussion about what the students have heard. The teacher must stress that students are responding at this point; they are only identifying or describing what they can see. Students may be given some time to articulate or note down their literal responses.
- Students are now asked to make inferences drawing on their list of literal responses. Teacher prompts may include:
- Why do you think an orchestra is used in this suite?
- Why has solo guitar been selected?
- Why does the piece use a wide dynamic range?
- What might … mean?
- Students use their knowledge of music vocabulary to write their inferences on post-it notes.
- The teacher may support students by asking them to consider musical elements
- Using post-it-notes validates students' responses and enables them to notice the similarities and differences between responses. All responses must be accepted.
- The teacher or group leader uses the post-it notes as prompts for generating student dialogue about the musical work.
- Post-it-notes may be re-positioned to create clusters of similar ideas or themes or insights about the use of musical elements.
- The teacher provides information and commentary about the work and the composer. For example:
- The teacher asks students to evaluate how these details impact on their meaning-making of the artwork. Student draw on their inferential statements/claims and their reading
For example, for 'The Last Place on Earth,' the students might evaluate the piece as conveying the mystery, sparseness, and unpredictability of the landscape of Antarctica. They may evaluate it as a virtuosic work for solo guitar, that uses technically complex rhythms, dynamic and melodic range to honour the renowned guitarist John Williams
Curriculum links for the above examples:
VCAMUR038,
VCAMUR045