Key Stage 2 music · Appreciating music

KS2 great composers and musicians: a guide for parents

The National Curriculum asks Key Stage 2 children to appreciate and understand high-quality live and recorded music, including the works of great composers and musicians. Schools decide who to study. Children learn something about the person, listen closely to their music, and practise describing and evaluating what they hear using the language of music.

Great composers and musicians, explained

The programme of study mentions great composers and musicians but names nobody, so each school builds its own list. A school might choose, for example, well-known composers such as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Clara Schumann, Holst or Elgar, alongside performers and bandleaders from jazz, blues, folk and popular music such as Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald or Ravi Shankar. The curriculum asks for music from different traditions, so you may find your child learning about people you have never heard of. A composer is someone who creates music, and a musician is someone who performs it. Some people are both.

Children are not expected to memorise a biography. They usually learn a handful of facts that help them understand the music: when and where the person lived, what instruments they played or wrote for, and one or two features of their life that shaped what they did. Beethoven, for instance, gradually lost his hearing as an adult and kept composing even when he was almost completely deaf, and Clara Schumann was one of the most celebrated pianists of the nineteenth century as well as a composer. The point of the story is to give the listener a way into the sound.

The main work is listening. Children hear a piece, often more than once and sometimes live in school or at a concert, and respond with the interrelated dimensions of music: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture and structure. They might ask how a composer makes music sound frightening, how a jazz soloist keeps a tune interesting, or why a symphony is divided into movements. Responses may be spoken, written, drawn as a listening map or acted out.

Listening is usually joined with performing. Class might sing a theme from a famous piece, play it on tuned percussion or recorders, or write a short piece in a composer’s style. Playing even a bar of the music helps children notice things such as repeated patterns, sudden changes in volume or the way a tune rises and falls. They also begin to compare composers and performers: how is one person’s music similar to or different from another’s, and why might that be?

Words your child will hear

Composer: A person who creates music, often writing it down so that others can play it.
Musician: A person who plays or sings music, whether or not they also compose.
Symphony: A long piece for orchestra, usually in several sections called movements.
Orchestra: A large group of instrumentalists, usually strings, woodwind, brass and percussion.
Theme: A main tune or musical idea that may come back or be changed during a piece.
Ostinato: A short pattern repeated over and over, often in the background.
Improvisation: Music made up on the spot, as in jazz.

What the National Curriculum says

The programme of study for Key Stage 2 says:

Pupils should be taught to appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians
Aim: pupils perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians.

Objectives from the National Curriculum in England, © Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Try it: answering a listening question

Children listen to ‘Mars, the Bringer of War’ from Holst’s The Planets, which a school has chosen as an example of a composer’s work, and are asked: ‘How does the composer make this music sound threatening?’

Listen once and say a first reaction. A child might say: ‘It sounds like an army marching towards us.’ That impression is a good starting point.
Listen again for the rhythm. The piece has a repeated pattern with five beats in every bar, which makes it feel unsteady, not like a regular march. The pattern keeps going, which is an ostinato.
Listen for the sound itself. Near the start the strings play very quietly and use the wooden part of the bow to tap the strings, giving a dry, ghostly sound. Later the brass instruments join in loudly.
Listen for how it changes. The music gets steadily louder and thicker as more instruments join, so the threat seems to be getting closer.
Put it together using the musical words and a reason for each choice.

Holst makes the music sound threatening by repeating a five-beat ostinato that feels uneasy and relentless. The strings begin quietly with a dry tapping timbre, then the brass joins and the music gets louder and thicker, as if something is getting closer.

Common mistakes and how to help

Thinking all ‘classical music’ comes from the Classical period

In everyday speech ‘classical’ covers everything from medieval chants to film scores, but in music history the Classical period is a particular time, roughly 1750 to 1820.

What helps: Use ‘orchestral’ or ‘concert music’ for the general idea and name the period when you can. Haydn and Mozart are Classical composers; Bach and Holst are not.

Believing great composers were all long-dead Europeans

Textbooks and concert programmes have long highlighted a narrow group, so children assume that is who matters.

What helps: Include living musicians and a wide mix of people, including women, performers and bandleaders. Ask what makes someone’s work ‘great’ and how we decide.

Learning dates and facts instead of listening

Facts are easy to test and write down, so a topic about composers can turn into a fact file with the music left out.

What helps: Ask what the music sounds like before asking about the life, and always ask for something heard. ‘I noticed…’ is the best way to start.

Assuming a composer must be famous for writing symphonies

The best-known works are large and formal, so children assume writing music means writing something grand.

What helps: Show that composers also wrote songs, dances, short piano pieces and music for plays, and that many jazz and folk musicians are celebrated for what they performed and improvised.

How to help at home

Listen to one piece, twice. Pick a short piece by a composer your child is studying. Play it once for pleasure, then again while they point to what is happening: where it gets louder, where the tune comes back, which instrument they can pick out.
Draw a listening map. Give your child paper and a pencil and ask them to draw while the music plays: wiggly lines for a flowing tune, spiky ones for short notes, big shapes for loud parts. Then ask them to talk you through it.
Ask one story question. Look at a few facts about the composer’s life together and ask whether they change how the music sounds. Beethoven’s loss of hearing or a jazz singer’s early years are good places to start.
Add music to ordinary moments. Play a different type of music while you cook or on a car journey and talk about the mood it creates. Children begin to hear that music can change how a moment feels.
Take them to a live performance. Look for free lunchtime recitals, school concerts, community bands and choirs. Seeing the instruments and players up close is memorable, and many events are short and relaxed enough for children.