Music

Performing Arts

VCE

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VCE Music is based on active engagement in all aspects of music. Students develop and refine musicianship skills and knowledge and develop a critical awareness of their relationship with music as listeners, performers, creators and music makers. Students explore, reflect on and respond to the music they listen to, create and perform. They analyse and evaluate live and recorded performances, and learn to incorporate, adapt and interpret musical practices from diverse cultures, times and locations into their own learning about music as both a social and cultural practice. Students study and practise ways of effectively communicating and expressing musical ideas to an audience as performers and composers, and respond to musical works as an audience. The developed knowledge and skills provide a practical foundation for students to compose, arrange, interpret, reimagine, improvise, recreate and critique music in an informed manner.

In this study students are offered a range of pathways that acknowledge and support a variety of student backgrounds and music learning contexts, including formal and informal.

This study enables students to:

  • develop and practise musicianship
  • perform, create, arrange, improvise, analyse, recreate, reimagine and respond to music from diverse times, places, cultures and contexts including recently created music
  • communicate understanding of cultural, stylistic, aesthetic and expressive qualities and characteristics of music
  • explore and strengthen personal music interests, knowledge and experiences
  • use imagination and creativity, and personal and social skills in music making
  • access pathways to further education, training and employment in music
  • participate and present in life-long music learning and the musical life of their community.

Assessment activities

  • performances of works, including ensembles/group work
  • discussions of the challenges presented by these works which may be presented as:
    – aural, oral, written and practical tasks
    – composition and/or improvisation exercises
  • short written/oral tasks
  • demonstration of intended approaches to reimagining existing works
  • discussions in which the development of techniques and personal voice are explained and demonstrated
  • responses to structured questions relating to previously unheard music
  • identification, recreation (on instrument) and style-appropriate notation of short music examples
  • demonstrations of approaches to reimagining existing works
  • aural and written exams.

Selection advice

Active participation in music develops musicianship through creating, performing, responding and analysing, and fosters an understanding of other times, places, cultures and contexts. Students develop ideas about the ways in which music can interact with other art forms, technology and design, and other fields of endeavour. Music learning has a significant impact on the cognitive, affective, motor, social, cultural and personal competencies of students.

Links to further pathways

VCE Music equips students with personal and musical knowledge and skills that enable them to focus on their musicianship in particular areas and follow pathways into tertiary music study or further training in a broad spectrum of music related careers. VCE Music also offers students opportunities for personal development and encourages them to make an ongoing contribution to the culture of their community through participation in life-long music making.