AoS 2 Vocal Music

Our third set work is Purcell’s song, Music for a While, written as part of the incidental music for a play by John Dryden. There are so many different performance versions of this song and we will study why they all exist, but here are three contrasting ones. As you listen/watch them, think about the different voice types and accompanying instruments involved in each one. [Please note some/all of the videos may contain third-party adverts for which Ryedale School cannot accept responsibility for.]

Who was Purcell?

This edition of BBC Radio 4’s Great Lives gives an insight into the importance of Henry Purcell the composer (30 minutes).

To gain an feeling of the expressive power of his music, explore Dido’s Lament, probably his most famous piece of music. There are some easy-to-digest videos to watch here.

Have a listen to Queen’s song, ‘Killer Queen’, our fourth set work:

Who were/are the band Queen?

Queen’s line-up in most of their recorded output are Freddie Mercury (vocals), Brian May (guitar), John Deacon (bass guitar) and Roger Taylor (drum kit). In recent years, after Freddie Mercury’s death, Queen have performed with Adam Lambert (winner of American Idol) as lead vocalist.

There are 1,000s of sources of information about Queen online. Their official YouTube site is a good place to start as a source of their music.

This quirky list of facts is taken from the NME website. New Musical Express (NME) is a newspaper about popular/rock music, founded in 1949. In the past couple of years, it has moved away from print to an online publication, but is still influential, with about seven million online users.

For an exhaustive list of 50 really significant pieces of music, explore The Story of Music, presented by Suzi Klein and Howard Goodall (composer of the theme tune to ‘Blackadder’ and ‘QI’).

The two pieces in this area of study are so different that it is difficult to know exactly what else to listen to, but we have to have a go at a playlist, so try this lot out: