EDUQAS A Level Music Conference

Queen Anne’s School Music Department hosted an outstanding conference for A Level music teachers and Sixth Form pupils on Tuesday 8 October.

The focus was on the main A Level set work: Haydn’s Symphony No. 104. David Coggins led the day – his focus was on music analysis, with a working title of The London Symphonies: Style, Wit and Unity – An Analytical Workshop on Haydn’s Symphony No. 104. David studied at the Royal College of Music as a performer and King’s College, London as a music analyst. David has a particular research interest in the interplay of harmonic structure and instrumentation in the piano concertos of Mozart and the symphonies of Haydn.

The conference was very well attended with 116 delegates in total. It was a real honour for the event to take place in the St Cecelia Recital Hall.

Further events of this nature will continue confirming the importance of academic music at Queen Anne’s School.

‘…there is no point to musical analysis at all unless it is ’two-dimensional’ – unless one examines the music in terms of what I call its ‘Background’ (and this ‘Background’ is the sum total of expectations which the composer creates) and its ‘Foreground’ (and its ‘Foreground’ is what it does instead). That is to say, the composer creates certain expectations, well defined expectations, which he proceeds to meaningfully contradict. There is therefore a strong relation between ‘Background’ and ‘Foreground’, between that which happens and that which lies at its back – or to put it the other way round, between that which the composer leads you to expect, and that which he does instead…’ Hans Keller, Lecture on Beethoven’s Op. 130, BBC broadcast from Leeds University, 1973.

The spirit of today!!

Stay tuned for the 2020 lecture plans….