Music for Macbeth

Year 9 have been looking at the role of music as a background to words, in particular how it can be used to enhance the mood, atmosphere and meaning of the text as this is recited. They listened to ‘The Night Mail’ – poem by Auden, music by Britten and also ‘Tango’ from Walton’s Facade in which the composer wrote music to accompany a selection of poems by Edith Sitwell. Their subsequent task was to compose music to accompany either the opening witches’ scene from Macbeth or Macbeth’s famous soliloquy, ‘Is this a dagger…’ Here is what one group put together:

Making Music with Technology

Year 8 have been experimenting with GarageBand up in our Mac Suite using MIDI keyboards. They loved the composing possibilities opened up by technology – the loops, the different sounds, the editing and tweaking and the sheer freedom of composing no longer having to be tied to how good your skills are on a musical instrument.

Here’s a taste of what they have done so far: