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Preparing for the Musicology/Aural skills examination
How do you prepare for an examination where the given works are unknown?
Thorough and detailed preparation is required as the first three questions have a number of component parts. While each small part may only be worth a few marks, it is important to answer accurately and concisely to achieve the maximum mark available.
Scanning
One valuable skill to acquire through practice is the ability to scan a score quickly and be able to observe the detail quickly.
Start by picking up any score available to you and give yourself a minute or two to try and pull out all the information you can about the music before listening to it. Develop a plan for approaching each unseen score logically. Start with the most obvious and basic points such as tempo, performing media (note the transposing instruments), key, and any features of the music that stand out (unusual instrumentation, imitation between parts, antiphony, rhythmic motifs, multi-metre, repetition and contrast).
This kind of practice doesn't take a lot of time, and if done regularly for a few minutes, you will be surprised how quickly you will begin to recognise features within the music. You will also notice that you will gradually start to see more within each score.
Focused listening
The next step is to listen to the music and expand your approach through more detailed and extensive enquiry of the concepts.
What have you missed in your first pass?
Do you miss the same point regularly?
Be aware that it is important to recognise that each piece of music is different in its use of concepts and that you need to be able to distinguish which concepts are more important. For example, while duration may be a central concept in an African drumming piece, it may be less a feature in a piece by Stockhausen. Start by prioritising the concepts.
This will give you a focus for listening and a skill for determining what is relevant or irrelevant in terms of the question being asked. Any question that is broad in approach (e.g. unity, variety, contrast, balance) will need you to focus on the important concepts.
Listening to more than one concept at a time
Finally, work towards developing the skill of listening to more than one concept at a time.
Study the vocabulary of the musical concepts and use it regularly so that you may improve your use of correct musical terminology
At the end of this article, there is a list of the concepts as they appear in the syllabus, and words and phrases that help you to interpret these terms. These are not intended to be definitive, merely a framework upon which you can build your vocabulary and knowledge
Working "against the clock
When you are confident with your score reading and understanding of the appropriate musical concepts, the focus may need to shift to the development of your responses
After your initial preparation, and as you start to practise questions from past examination papers, you will become aware of the need to manage your time efficiently and within the constraints of the examination. Start by doing each question separately to familiarise yourself with the required answer structure. Try to improve your response both in time and in detail. This will help you feel more at ease with the overall pace of the examination and be better able to manage your time effectively.
A good starting point for practice would be the 2001 and 2002 HSC Music 2 examinations. They are relevant in style and layout and you can evaluate your answers through reference to the HSC Standards Package. The Standards Packages are available for both years and are an excellent resource for students and teachers. The 2002 package also includes exemplar answers, so that you can recognise what examiners are looking for in an excellent response.
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