Music is an integral part of life at Warwick School. Every pupil learns an instrument in Year 7, and many choose to continue their musical journey throughout their time with us.
Performance, Composition & Listening
Music education at Warwick School centres on three key areas: performance, composition, and listening. Pupils explore a wide variety of genres and repertoire to broaden their musical understanding and inspire their own creativity. As their confidence grows, they develop their compositional skills, learning how to craft pieces they can be truly proud of. We encourage both solo and group performances, giving pupils valuable life‑skills and regular opportunities to share their achievements with family and friends.
Our choirs, bands, orchestras, and ensembles all contribute to the rich musical education pupils receive, complementing and enhancing the high‑quality teaching that takes place in the classroom.
For those who choose to continue their studies, we offer the iGCSE in Music and the Edexcel A Level, providing a clear and supported pathway for talented and passionate musicians.
Our curriculum builds strong foundations in Years 7–9 and prepares pupils for success at GCSE and beyond. Through an engaging programme of study, boys develop the knowledge, skills and confidence to enjoy the subject and achieve their potential.
Year 7
Michaelmas term All pupils are given are given an orchestral instrument and weekly lessons as part of our Year 7 Music Scheme for the Michaelmas term. The whole cohort puts on a concert at the end of the term for parents to enjoy, and pupils who show promise on their allocated instrument are given the chance to continue through the academic year with discounted lessons.
Easter term Year 7 boys engage in a singing project in the second term of the year, learning about music theory and notation through a collection of songs that they perform alongside our most experienced musicians in the top-level Gala Concert. This is a really fun way of getting all of the technical information into their heads whilst doing something inherently musical with their voice, and gives them the chance to experience the excitement of being in a fully-fledged concert and get an idea of how they might make music a part of their life as they travel through the school and beyond.
Summer term is a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) project, where boys are given the chance to turn Pachelbel’s Canon into a dance track using music technology software. The focus is on developing compositional skills, particularly with a focus on melody and textural writing.
Year 8
Michaelmas term The focus topics in Michaelmas term are blues and fanfares. The blues scheme of work develops improvisation skills and provides opportunities for a development of harmonic awareness via keyboard skills; Fanfares introduces notation software for the boys to really get stuck into composing in the manner that they might in years to come. Boys also, during the second half of term, prepare a carol for performance at the Carol Service.
Easter term Orchestral Hits and Choral Bangers is the title for the scheme of work that starts this term, providing boys with a cultural understanding of some of the most revered music in western classical music’s repertoire. Music and Politics follows, where the analytical and listening skills developed in the previous scheme of work are really stretched further via musical elements, all pieces looked at with a slant on how the political scene affected the composer’s choices.
Summer term Much of the summer term will be preparing for the end of year exam, but there is also a composition task for boys to engage with towards their coursework, which focusses on electronic dance music, and can be done on any of the software that they have been introduced to thus far in the curriculum.
Year 9
Music is optional in Year 9 as part of a boy’s curriculum; they make the choice of whether to continue in the second term of Year 8. The purpose of the Year 9 curriculum is both to stretch boys who have an interest in the subject, as well as prepare them properly for the GCSE, should they choose to continue onto that in Year 10 (some choose to just do it for fun in Year 9 – they are also very warmly welcome!).
Michaelmas term A focus on reggae in the first half of term gives boys the chance to learn how to perform band music in groups as well as focus on the Primary Triads, dissonance and rhythmic devices. In the second half of term boys learn how to write music for film by writing their own music, on notation software, to accompany a fictional James Bond trailer. The focus in their writing is on texture, structure and idiomatic writing for instrumental forces.
Easter term Boys continue their development as composers in a songwriting scheme of work that provides them with the chance to develop their listening and analytical skills by looking in detail at some of the greatest songs from pop and rock music from the past 75 years. They then use this knowledge to write a pop song of their own. Sweet, Suite Music! is the title for the second half of term, in which boys learn about suites and, particularly, the thumbprints of the baroque dance suite, which prepares them well for the GCSE Music syllabus.
Summer term A scheme of work on video game music gives boys the chance to write some music to accompany a video game, learning how to use the various musical elements to set an effective atmosphere, with given prompts and stimuli. The second half of term, Lieder Me Somewhere New! gives boys the chance to explore the art of arranging music, taking some of Schubert’s most famous songs and rearranging them into a style of their choice (we’ve had thrash metal Schubert in the past, which was utterly amazing, as well as reggae, blues and jazz versions of Death and the Maiden).
GCSE
The GCSE course consists of three sections: composition (30%), performance (30%), and listening and appraising (40% examiner paper).
Performance (30%) Boys give their coursework performances in Year 11 during the Easter term but have opportunities to develop their programme via concert platforms in Year 10 and need to give a solo performance and ensemble performance totalling 4-6 minutes (Grade 4 standard).
Composition (30%) Over the course of two years, boys are given dedicated time each week in class to develop their composition skills. They submit two compositions for examination as coursework elements at the end of the Easter Term in Year 11; one is a free composition and can be in any style, whilst the other is a brief composition, written in response to a given brief (these are published in September of Year 11 by the exam board). Composition is often a time-intensive process, and boys are supported through it in academic time and with clinics each week during lunch breaks and after school.
Listening and Appraising (40%) Boys sit a written paper at the end of the Year 11 in which their exam consists of eight listening questions. Six of these questions are skill-based and test the vocabulary and listening skills that the boys have developed over the course; two of the questions are on set works, which can be studied in more detail. These are changed by the exam board periodically but are presently ‘Badinerie’ by J.S. Bach and ‘Africa’ by Toto.
