What factors influence the development of musical styles?

This could include culture, (popular culture, traditional, other art forms), globalisation, technology, changing nature of music industries, historical events or politics.
Choose to discuss one aspect in depth with examples and provide summaries of the others. 
What influences music today?

Your task is to present your findings to the class in groups of three, as well as a group composition or performance.

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Presentation

Each group is allocated a topic.
Group A: Jazz
Group B: Popular Music
Group C: Music and Religion

Choose 3 out of the 6 questions to investigate. Present your findings to the class in a 10 minute interactive presentation. Provide musical examples (scores, audio, videos, related artworks/album covers) with context to support your argument.

Questions
Resources

Your presentation should have a clear introduction, discussion, explanation and conclusion.

In your introduction, consider:

• Defining the question.
  
• Defining periods of this style.

In your discussion, consider:

• Exploring influential musicians & why.
  
• How each factor influenced the development of the style (eg. societal/personal/global views, musical community, musical elements, composition, subject matter, performance, accessibility).
  
• Where, when, who, why, how? then and now.
  
• How it influences the creation of music, acceptance, hearing. 
  
• Identify and analyse patterns and trends across the factors and organise your ideas. 

In your conclusion,

• Evaluate which factor has the greatest impact on the development of the style. You can rate them in an order of importance by using comparisons.

In considering style, use the concepts of music:

• Duration, pitch, texture, instrumentation (choice and group size), dynamics and expressive techniques, extended techniques, tone colour. 

Performance/ Composition

As a group, present a 3-5 minute performance of two contrasting pieces within the same style of music (must be from different periods, e.g. historical and modern day examples).

Alternatively, you can compose a one minute composition which fuses elements of the same style from different periods, (e.g. historical and modern day). This must involve at least 3 instruments (instruments may be doubled).

*Feel free to use technology in your preparation and presentation to keep it interactive. Suggested web tools can be found here. 

Go to Roles

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Popular Music

Music and Religion

Jazz