Students taking music GCSE are to study the Beatles’ groundbreaking
album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as well as the Latin rock
band Santana, as part of an updated curriculum. Though now almost 50
years old and ancient history to the teenagers who will embark on the
course, three Sgt Pepper tracks will be at the core of the new AQA GCSE,
including the Lennon/McCartney collaboration Lucy in the Sky with
Diamonds.
Pupils will be required to study melody, harmony, structure, rhythm
and the meaning of lyrics such as “Picture yourself in a boat on a
river/ With tangerine trees and marmalade skies/ Somebody calls you, you
answer quite slowly/ A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.”
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was widely thought at the time to
allude to the drug LSD, but according to Lennon’s son Julian was in fact
inspired by a childhood picture with the same title that he drew of his
nursery classmate Lucy O’Donnell.
The other Beatles tracks included in the curriculum will be With a
Little Help from My Friends – later memorably covered by Joe Cocker –
and Within You, Without You, written by George Harrison. The three Fab
Four songs will form a quarter of the “understanding music” part of the
course.
For “traditional music”, students will study songs from Santana’s
17th album, Supernatural, which won nine Grammy awards after its release
in 1999. The “western classical tradition since 1910” part of the
curriculumwill focus on the American composer Aaron Copland’s Saturday
Night Waltz and Hoedown, from his 1942 ballet, Rodeo. Going back
further, the course will also look at Haydn’s Symphony 101 in D Major,
known as The Clock, which premiered in March 1794.
Students will still have to write two compositions and give a
performance as part of their exam, but as well as choosing cello,
clarinet or piano, they will have the option to demonstrate their DJing
and “scratching” skills. They can also sing – anything from Beyonc’s
Single Ladies to Puccini’s Nessun Dorma.
Seb
Ross, head of AQA’s music department, said: “Pop music began in this
country with the Beatles in the swinging 60s, so what better band to
look to for the study of contemporary music than the Fab Four? We’ve
chosen the Beatles because John, Paul, Ringo and George helped to define
popular music and the iconic Sgt Pepper album has taken on a life of
its own, so it’s an exciting addition to AQA’s music GCSE.”
Alexis Petridis, the Guardian’s head rock and pop critic, said of the
new curriculum: “I’m all for the music GCSE trying to get students to
engage with rock and pop music as well as classical, but with all due
respect to the makers of Sgt Pepper, I wonder if a Beatles album
knocking on 50 years old is any more relevant to a teenager than Haydn
is. But at least I can understand why they picked it: classic album,
high watermark of a legendary band’s career.
“I’d like to have been in the meeting where, with the whole rich and
brilliant history of pop and rock from which to choose something for
students to dissect and examine in depth, they came to the conclusion
that the obvious answer was Supernatural by Santana. I’ve literally got
no idea whatsoever why anyone would think that was a good idea. It’s a
bloody awful record.”
One 15-year-old currently studying Les Misérables as part of his GCSE
music course was also unimpressed. “The Beatles? That’s a very bad
plan. I like the Beatles, but they’re used so much,” the student said.
“Always at primary school it was the Beatles. They’re so prominent.
Santana? No, I’ve not heard of them.
“I enjoy my course. I feel it should be based more on performance
rather than tons and tons of theory, but I like the composition aspect.
We’ve not actually done much classical. The first unit we did was
handbells, then we did minimalism, now we’re doing musical theatre,
which everyone hates.”
But Ernie Sutton, treasurer of the British Beatles Fan Club, was
delighted. “It’s a great tribute to the Beatles that their music is
being studied for the new AQA music GCSE,” he said. “The Beatles changed
the face of popular music and songwriting in a very short space of
time, which future musicians benefited from. It is fantastic that young
people can study their groundbreaking and influential Sgt Pepper album,
which changed recording techniques for ever.”
In the current curriculum, pupils explore different strands of music
rather than concentrating on specific pieces or albums. The new GCSE,
which will be available for teaching from September next year, has been
submitted to the exam regulator Ofqual for approval.
AQA has also developed a new dance GCSE, which it says has won
backing from key figures in the dance world. Contemporary dance training
in the UK was recently criticised by three leading choreographers
including Akram Khan,
who complained about declining standards at UK auditions and a lack of
“rigour, technique and performance skills” among UK-trained dancers.
Sean Gregory, director of creative learning for the Barbican Centre and the Guildhall School of Music
and Drama, one of the world’s leading conservatoires, welcomed the new
GCSE and the inclusion of artists like the Beatles and Santana.
Carlos Santana was, he said, “a fantastic musician” and a pioneer in
his time, who drew on a wide variety of Latin and African influences
which would help students open doors to other genres and creative
influences.
“The musical landscape has changed,” said Gregory. “Young people’s
motivations for learning music is shifting. A lot of this is to do with
unlocking creativity for young people so they can start realising music
in different ways.”
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