Music Appreciation Curriculum

Seven musicians, several centuries and some very different approaches to making music feature on Music of the Day this week.

11 October – Anton Bruckner

Austrian composer and organist Anton Bruckner is best remembered for his vast symphonies and sacred choral music. His distinctive orchestral style helped make him one of the important figures of late Romantic music.

12 October – Sylvius Leopold Weiss

Weiss was one of the great virtuosos of the Baroque lute and wrote extensively for the instrument. His music offers an opportunity to hear an instrument that pupils may rarely encounter in everyday listening.

13 October – Gilberto Mendes

Brazilian composer Gilberto Mendes became an important figure in his country’s twentieth-century musical avant-garde, exploring new sounds and approaches to composition.

14 October – Alexander von Zemlinsky

Composer and conductor Zemlinsky worked at a fascinating point in European musical history, with music rooted in Romantic traditions while the musical world around him was rapidly changing.

15 October – Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji

An extraordinarily individual composer and pianist whose catalogue contains some famously long and technically demanding works.

16 October – Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck

A Dutch composer and renowned organist whose music connects the late Renaissance with the emerging Baroque period. His influence stretched well beyond the Netherlands.

17 October – Frédéric Chopin

One of the great pianist-composers of the nineteenth century. Chopin wrote almost entirely for the piano, exploring the instrument’s expressive possibilities through nocturnes, études, preludes, mazurkas and much more.

Helping pupils become better listeners

The variety in Music of the Day is useful only if pupils are given the confidence to engage with unfamiliar music.

That thinking led to Music Appreciation – Unit 1: Learning to Listen.

Rather than beginning with a particular period or list of composers, the four lessons explicitly teach pupils how to approach a piece of music:

Notice → Listen Purposefully → Describe Precisely → Judge and Justify

The aim is to move pupils beyond simply saying whether they like something, towards noticing musical choices and explaining their responses using evidence from what they have heard.

🎧 Explore Unit 1:
https://musicoftheday.co.uk/product/music-appreciation-curriculum-unit-1-learning-to-listen/

And there’s a different musician waiting every day at MusicOfTheDay.co.uk.

From opera and Romanticism to jazz, electronic film scores and twentieth-century classical music, there is another wide-ranging seven days ahead on Music of the Day.

4 October – Akira Miyoshi

A Japanese composer whose music became an important part of the country’s twentieth-century classical tradition.

5 October – Harold Faltermeyer

A German composer, producer and musician particularly associated with the electronic sound of 1980s film music. His instrumental Axel F became an international hit.

6 October – Stanley Myers

A British film composer who wrote scores for dozens of films. His piece Cavatina became especially famous through its use in The Deer Hunter.

7 October – Felix Draeseke

A German Romantic composer whose substantial output included symphonies, operas and chamber music, although his work is much less frequently heard today.

8 October – Clarence Williams

A pianist, composer, publisher, bandleader and producer whose career places him right at the heart of the development of early jazz and blues.

9 October – Giuseppe Verdi

One of opera’s towering figures, responsible for works including Rigoletto, La traviata, Aida and Otello.

10 October – Priaulx Rainier

A South African-born British composer who developed a distinctive musical style during the twentieth century and taught for many years at the Royal Academy of Music.

Music Appreciation: Learning to Listen

This kind of musical variety is also at the heart of the new Music Appreciation Curriculum.

Rather than beginning by teaching pupils about one musical period or genre, Unit 1: Learning to Listen starts with the skills they need to approach any music.

Across four structured lessons, pupils learn to:

Notice → Listen Purposefully → Describe Precisely → Judge and Justify

The intention is to move beyond simply asking children whether they liked a piece and help them explain what they heard, how the music achieved its effect and what evidence supports their response.

It is designed for ages 10–14 and requires no instrumental background.

🎧 Explore Unit 1: Learning to Listen:
https://musicoftheday.co.uk/product/music-appreciation-curriculum-unit-1-learning-to-listen/

And you can continue to discover a different musician every day at MusicOfTheDay.co.uk.