Music

2019 saw the implementation of the Kodaly pedagogy at the Year 3 level. The children developed their understanding of the moveable ‘doh’. This enabled them to not only sing songs using solfa, but transfer the solfa pitches for a given song to pitched instruments. The children played the given piece in various transpositions.

The children demonstrated their understanding of moveable doh on pitched instruments, playing a given piece of music in a range of keys. Likewise, the children were able to make pitch dictations on the music stave (of a given song) and demonstrate they could transpose the melody on the stave using solfa. Grasping the concept of moveable doh has provided the children with a much deeper learning experience and in turn further developed their aural skills. A wonderful bonus of teaching this pedagogy has been the development and the strengthening of the Year 3 singing skills. As a result, the vocal contribution that the Year 3 students made to the 2019 Junior Choir was very strong.

The Seesaw programme was used to report on children’s music learning from Years 1–6. Most of the posts were video recordings of class performance activities. This provided a valuable tool for both the children and their teachers to reflect upon classroom learning. The children loved sharing their learning through this medium, and the accessibility was appreciated by the parent community.

This year the children enjoyed the performance of the adapted opera The Barberof Seville put on by the New Zealand Opera. The opportunity to enjoy the performance of live music makes up the performance component of the Music curriculum. Once again, we were entertained by a superb performance. New Zealand Opera provided detailed resource material that was able to be used to prepare the audience in advance of the

performance, thus deepening the students understanding and appreciation of this opera.

In August, the two Year 6 classes participated in the Strum Strike Blow Festival at the Horncastle Arena, alongside 1000 children from other Christchurch schools. One of the classes learnt recorder pieces for the event, while the other played pieces on the mallet instruments. A feature of the chosen pieces of music was the provision of multi-level music parts, thus catering to the range of music abilities, and extending children who were more musically able. A highlight for the children was being part of 1000 children playing massed items of music together. The performance of the James Bond Theme was voted as their favourite piece by the children. This is always a popular event and a positive way for the children to perform to a live audience.

In June, the Years 6–8 Cantare Choir took part in a new choral venture, the Encore Festival, which was held at Christ’s College. The event was a day-long choral festival for students in Years 6–10 from Christchurch independent schools. The students gathered in the morning to combine with other schools to learn massed item pieces. During the evening concert, each school choir presented an item. The evening concluded with three massed items. This was enormously successful and a lot of fun. It was great

working with music colleagues from other schools, and for our students to combine with other school choirs.

Another highlight for the choir was singing in the 80th Primary Schools’ Music Festival. This year saw the festival return to the Christchurch Town Hall. It was a very special evening being back in the Town Hall with its wonderful acoustics, and a first being in the Town Hall for many of our students.

At the end of Term 3, the Junior Choir and Cantare Choir were invited to sing in the St Andrew’s College Choral Extravaganza Concert. The choirs each sung two pieces. The choirs were able to listen to music performed by a range of choral groups and a range of musical genres. Our unique setup of having our Preparatory School choirs sing alongside our Secondary School groups provides our students with an opportunity to listen to groups that they might join later in their time at school.

This year was a particularly strong year for the Junior Orchestra with a very secure string section. This was the result of the superb string teaching from Ginnie Goldstein onsite in our school. A performance aim for the year was to raise the profile of this group within the College. The orchestra performed on four occasions, at the St Andrew’s College classical concert early in the second term, an afternoon concert to students in the Preparatory School, and twice at Tuesday morning chapel services. The final performance was of the Ukrainian Bell Carol, showing off the orchestra’s ability to play pianissimo (very quiet) right through to fortissimo (very loud).

The Junior School Christmas Carol Concert in the Chapel featured music items from each of the Years 1–3 year groups. The Year 2 children used one of their Kodaly repertoire songs and composed their own Christmas themed lyrics. They then played this piece on resonator bells and glockenspiels. The children learnt a lot about performing together on their instruments, and the skill of staying together playing in time. The Year 3 children sung a setting of Away in a Manger that had been put forward by one of the children.

It has been a rewarding to see the Preparatory School children continue to develop their music skills in both the classroom and in performance groups, and in turn share this in performance settings in the classroom programme, school, and community settings.