OCR A-Level Music: a chosen area of study, a complete overview

What this part of the course covers

Alongside the compulsory Area of Study 1, you study at least one of five optional areas of study in depth. This overview sets out the five options, a transferable method for mastering any area, and how each is examined in Section A and Section C. Each area, and the study method, has its own dot-point page with practice questions.

The five optional areas

The optional areas are Popular Song (blues, jazz song, swing and big band), Developments in Instrumental Jazz (early jazz through fusion), Religious Music of the Baroque (Bach, Purcell and Handel), Programme Music 1820 to 1910 (Romantic narrative music), and Innovations in Music 1900 to the present (Impressionism through minimalism and electronic music). You must take at least one; learning more gives you a free choice of Section C essays.

A transferable method

Whatever the area, master it in three layers: context and development (the period and how the style changed), styles or sub-genres (the distinct manners and their leading figures), and signature features under the elements (the audible fingerprints). This model fits both Section A (which tests features in unfamiliar extracts) and Section C (which tests development and styles in essays).

The signature features at a glance

Each area has a small set of defining features:

• Popular Song: the twelve-bar blues, blue notes, swing rhythm, call and response, AABA form, big-band sectional scoring.
• Instrumental Jazz: improvisation, swing feel, the evolution from simple to extended to modal harmony, the rhythm section, the head-solos-head structure.
• Religious Music of the Baroque: counterpoint and fugue, basso continuo, terraced dynamics, word-painting, ground bass, recitative-aria-chorus.
• Programme Music: descriptive orchestration, the idee fixe and leitmotif, thematic transformation, chromatic harmony, the expanded orchestra.
• Innovations: whole-tone and modal scales and parallel chords (Impressionism), atonality and the twelve-tone row (serialism), neoclassicism, repetition and process (minimalism), electronic and new timbres.

How the chosen area serves the exam

Your chosen area earns marks in two sections:

• Section A asks you to identify and describe (and sometimes compare) unfamiliar extracts from your area, by their style and signature features.
• Section C asks for a 25-mark essay on an area of study, and you answer two essays from two different areas, so depth and breadth both matter.

Check your knowledge

A mix of recall and applied questions on the chosen areas of study. Attempt them, then check against the solutions.

1. Name the five optional areas of study. (3 marks)
2. How many optional areas must you take, and why is more sensible? (2 marks)
3. In which two sections does your chosen area appear? (2 marks)
4. What are the three layers of the study method? (3 marks)
5. Give two signature features of Popular Song. (2 marks)
6. Put these jazz styles in order: bebop, early jazz, modal, swing. (2 marks)
7. Give two signature features of Baroque religious music. (2 marks)
8. What is the difference between an idee fixe and a tone row? (2 marks)