amazon.co.ukA* revision of the Edexcel 9MU0 set works across all six Areas of Study - vocal, instrumental, film, popular/jazz, fusions and new directions - with key features, context and exam technique for Section A and Section B.
Bach, Cantata Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott BWV 80 (movements 1, 2, 8). A Lutheran Reformation cantata on Psalm 46, its tune attributed to Luther. Movement 1 is a chorale fantasia: the chorale melody appears in augmentation (long notes) in the unison violins while the bass voice and continuo state it in canon; voices enter imitatively over driving independent instrumental lines. Movement 2 is a duet for soprano and bass in chorale-prelude texture, the chorale sounding in long notes (organ pedals) beneath more florid voices. Movement 8 is the closing four-part chorale: the congregation's hymn, harmonised in Bach's style - root-position cadences, suspensions, stepwise bass. Context: Lutheran worship, chorale as congregational spine, Word over word painting. Exam angle: cadences, modulations to closely related keys, suspensions, canon and augmentation.
Vaughan Williams, On Wenlock Edge (Nos. 1, 3, 5). A song cycle for tenor, piano and string quartet setting Housman's A Shropshire Lad. No. 1 'On Wenlock Edge' opens with a storm depiction (tremolando, sweeping glissandi in the strings); No. 3 'Is my team ploughing?' is a dramatic dialogue between a dead man and his living friend, with sharply contrasting piano and string answers; No. 5 'Bredon Hill' evokes church bells (pealing open fifths) and a serene pastoral ending. Context: English pastoral school, Tudor-inflected harmony, 1909 (revised later). Exam angle: word painting, texture between piano and strings, modal inflections, sonority.
Clara Wieck-Schumann, Piano Trio in G minor Op. 17, movement 1. Sonata form: agitated G minor first subject (chromatic, often compared to Bach's Musical Offering theme), flowing second subject in the relative major B-flat; development with fugal writing; coda. Context: 1846, her only piano trio, written by a woman composer in a male-dominated profession. Exam angle: sonata form in a minor key, chromatic third relations, chamber texture and dialogue between piano and strings.
Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique, movement I (Réveries - Passions). Programmatic, semi-autobiographical (Harriet Smithson), 1830. Long slow introduction; allegro with chromatic first subject, transition, late lyrical second subject (the idée fixe), development and a coda recalling the idée fixe before a chorale-like close. Expanded orchestra, extreme dynamics, programme over Classical balance. Exam angle: how Berlioz bends sonata form; idée fixe; orchestration as narrative.
Danny Elfman, Batman Returns (Birth of a Penguin Parts I and II, Batman vs the Circus, The Rise and Fall from Grace). Gothic orchestral score (1992): dark chromatic harmony, minor-mode leitmotifs for Penguin and Catwoman, circus-band grotesquerie, low brass and celesta colour, driving ostinati under sweeping melodic lines. Elfman's language: diatonic melody over chromatic, often tritone-related harmony; abrupt cues cut to picture. Exam angle: leitmotif transformation, orchestration, harmonic colour, music's role in characterisation.
Bernard Herrmann, Psycho (Prelude, The City, Marion, The Murder (Shower Scene), The Toys, The Cellar, Discovery, Finale). Written for string orchestra alone (1960) - a deliberate choice for uniform timbre. 'Prelude' runs on relentless rhythmic ostinato; 'The City' dashes in fast homophony; 'The Murder' deploys shrieking high-register violin stabs, minor seconds and tritones - melody abandoned for pure dissonance; 'The Toys' and 'The Cellar' keep tension with fragmentary gestures. Exam angle: ostinato, dissonance (clusters, minor 2nds), string-only sonority, how cues mirror Hitchcock's editing; black-and-white minimalism.
Kate Bush, Hounds of Love (Cloudbusting, And dream of sheep, Under ice). 1985 art-pop, self-produced on the Fairlight CMI sampler. 'Cloudbusting' (based on Peter Reich's memoir of his father Wilhelm Reich) builds from hypnotic cello ostinato and a rolling drum pattern to a soaring chorus (with David Gilmour's guitar); 'And dream of sheep' is a fragile live-piano lullaby of a drowning sailor; 'Under ice' uses icy synth pads, echoing voice and the Fairlight's sample manipulation for claustrophobia. The last two sit inside the 'Ninth Wave' concept suite. Exam angle: production techniques (sampling, layering), structure and build, text painting, art-pop context.
Beatles, Revolver (Eleanor Rigby, Here, there and everywhere, I want to tell you, Tomorrow never knows). 1966 studio revolution. 'Eleanor Rigby': double string octet (George Martin arrangement), no conventional pop backing, Dorian-mode inflected verse, loneliness theme. 'Here, there and everywhere': gentle 1960s ballad with jazz-inflected harmony and shifts. 'I want to tell you' (Harrison): Indian-inflected, tension between melody and dissonant pedal. 'Tomorrow never knows': one-note (C) drone, tape loops, backwards guitar, ADT vocals, Tibetan Book of the Dead inspiration - the avant-garde absorbed into pop. Exam angle: instrumentation vs genre expectations, studio techniques, modal and drone harmony, 1960s cultural context.
Courtney Pine, Back in the Day (Inner state (of mind), Lady Day and (John Coltrane), Love and affection). 2000 UK acid-jazz/fusion: jazz saxophone (Pine on soprano and other saxes) over club-culture grooves (drum'n'bass, hip-hop beats, scratching), synthesised textures, 'Lady Day and (John Coltrane)' paying tribute to the jazz tradition within modern production, 'Love and affection' reworking Joan Armatrading. Exam angle: fusion of jazz harmony/improvisation with popular grooves, sampling, cultural context of British Black music.
Debussy, Estampes (Pagodes, La soirée dans Grenade). 1903. 'Pagodes' translates Javanese gamelan (heard at the 1889 Paris Exposition) into piano music: pentatonic melody, layered ostinati, heterophonic doubling, bell-like sonority, sustained resonances - Western harmony suspended. 'La soirée dans Grenade' fuses Spanish colour: habanera bass rhythm, modal melody, hints of bitonality, guitar-imitating figuration. Exam angle: pentatonicism, layering, non-functional harmony, musical exoticism and its context (colonial-era Paris, Exposition Universelle).
Anoushka Shankar, Breathing Under Water (Burn, Breathing Under Water, Easy). 2007 (with Karsh Kale): Indian classical meets electronica/pop. Raga-based sitar melody, tanpura drone, tabla tala cycles and improvisatory phrasing, layered over programmed beats, loops, synths and English-language vocals; 'Easy' adds pop-song verse-chorus shape. Exam angle: raga/tala vs western metre and tonality, drone, texture fusion, world-music collaboration context.
Kaija Saariaho, Petals for Violoncello and Live Electronics. 1988. Spectralism: timbre and colour as the primary musical material - harmonics, sul ponticello, tremolando, col legno and other extended techniques; live electronics transform and resonate the cello in real time; non-pulsed, floating time replaced by density of texture rather than metre; harmony derived from spectral thinking rather than functional progression. Exam angle: extended techniques, the role of technology, timbre as structure, late-20th-century context.
Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring (Introduction, The Augurs of Spring, Ritual of Abduction). 1913, premiered to riot at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. 'Introduction': high solo bassoon (Lithuanian folk-inflected melody) above whispering strings - ritual dawn. 'Augurs of Spring': the famous pounding chord (a dominant 7th superimposed on a major chord a semitone below) struck on off-beats with irregular accents - primitivist rhythm replacing metre; 'Ritual of Abduction' accelerates into frenetic, fragmented ostinati. Exam angle: rhythmic displacement and metrical disruption, dissonant superimposition, ostinato, folk material, the ballet's scandal and modernism.
Exam technique (9MU0/03): Section A includes three set-work questions with audio and skeleton scores (short answers plus some multiple choice) and one short melody/rhythm completion exercise from an unfamiliar piece related to the set works' style. Essay one (Q5, 20 marks) links set-work study to an unfamiliar extract (audio, no score) - learn each set work's signature devices well enough to spot their cousins. Essay two (Q6, 30 marks) evaluates one set work as a whole with a score excerpt but no audio - structure by element, anchor to the music, judge.