Edexcel A-Level Music: Vocal Music area of study overview

The Vocal Music area of study pairs a German Baroque sacred cantata with an English twentieth-century song cycle, so that you can compare how composers two centuries apart set words to music. This overview ties the two set works together; each has a matching dot-point page.

The two set works

J. S. Bach, Cantata Ein feste Burg, BWV 80 (movements 1, 2 and 8) is a Lutheran chorale cantata for Reformation Day, built on Luther's hymn. Movement 1 is a contrapuntal chorale-fantasia with the chorale in canon as a cantus firmus; movement 2 combines a bass aria with the soprano chorale; movement 8 is the plain closing four-part chorale.

Ralph Vaughan Williams, On Wenlock Edge (Nos. 1, 3 and 5) is an English song cycle (1909) for tenor, piano and string quartet, setting A. E. Housman's death-haunted poems. It uses modal, non-functional harmony, word-painting and a free through-composed structure.

Text setting and word-painting

Both composers shape the vocal line and accompaniment to the text, choosing syllabic or melismatic writing and using word-painting. Bach paints individual words within Baroque counterpoint; Vaughan Williams paints whole scenes through modal harmony and pictorial string writing (tremolando for the storm).

The contrast in harmony

Bach's harmony is functional, diatonic and goal-directed, driven by the continuo with clear cadences. Vaughan Williams's is modal and non-functional, colouring the text through planing (parallel chords), false relations and added-note chords. This contrast is the heart of any comparison.

How Vocal Music is examined

• Short questions (Section A). Text setting, harmony, texture and instrumentation in extracts from either work.
• The links essay (20 marks). Relate an unfamiliar vocal or sacred extract to the set works.
• The single set-work essay (30 marks). Evaluate one work in depth with context.
• Comparison. Pair the same technique (text setting, harmony) across the two works with located examples.