Music
Welcome to the Music section of our website. At Checkendon CE (A) Primary School we believe in giving our children opportunities to explore the joy of music through singing, performing, creating and listening.
Whole School Music Activities: We enjoy a weekly ‘singing worship’ when we meet as a whole school to sing a wide variety of songs. Our annual Nativity and Key Stage Two productions also give a great opportunity for the children to sing and perform. We have strong links with St Peter and Pauls' Church and we take part in services there in which music plays a major role. The whole school, led by the choir enjoys services at Harvest, Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and Year 6 hold their leavers’ service there. We also enjoy an afternoon of performing in our annual Music Concert.
School Choir: Children in Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 are invited to join our school choir. All are welcome. There is no audition. We have regular performances throughout the year, encouraging singing at our Harvest, Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and end-of-year church services. We also entertain at our PTA' Santa's Grotto evening and annual Music Concert. The choir also join a number of other schools and perform at Dorchester Abbey in Oxfordshire's Festival of Voices.
Learning a Musical Instrument: Children in all year groups have the opportunity to learn a variety of instruments. We currently offer piano, violin, ukulele, guitar and flute through our talented Mrs Davies who provides all our music provision. Please see the office for further details.
Sing up Day
From the UK to the UAE and the US to China, schools and singers join us on Sing Up Day. A brand new Sing Up Day anthem is commissioned and we enjoy learning the song to perform globally!
2025 Sing Up Day https://youtu.be/Am5hfBRo178
2024 Sing Up Day https://youtu.be/5dCGVvmn4Kg
2023 Sing Up Day https://youtu.be/sH1Rk71Idzg
2023 Sing Up Day https://youtu.be/DWgKlWpK3Yc
2022 Sing Up Day https://youtu.be/UL5zuteg-oA
Music - our intent
We want all pupils to benefit from a music education which engages and inspires them to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians. Our curriculum provision will increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. As pupils progress, we want them to develop a growing musical vocabulary that allows them to critically engage with music. Teaching and learning of music will be a reflective process for the children as they are given the opportunities to assess themselves and their peers. We intend that children will be confident in celebrating their musical success and skills with their peers and wider audiences through performances and recordings.
Music - our implementation
Checkendon School is a small primary school with big musical ambitions. Following the publication of the Model Music Curriculum in 2021 and the National Plan for Music Education in 2022 we have overhauled our music curriculum and provision and are constantly seeking ways to encourage all children to experience the joy of making music. We are committed to providing high quality, weekly whole class music lessons for all age groups from reception to year 6 to enable children to excel in individual and small group instrumental lessons and ensembles. We believe that the opportunity to participate in whole class recorder lessons would enrich the music making in our school and would provide every child with a valuable opportunity to learn an instrument and experience the many benefits of playing together. Small schools have very small budgets and do not receive any money for music provision. Many schools are being forced to remove music from the curriculum due to the lack of funding and there is a lot of media attention around this at the moment. Considering the context of the community we serve, by offering music lessons we are realising cultural capital through enhanced music provision. We will be exposing our children to a variety of subject areas, promoting character building qualities that lead to creating well-rounded, global citizens, and of course the more typical expectations of education – which are to provide children with recognised and meaningful opportunities to succeed. We believe that music enriches the lives of our pupils both individually and our wider school community. We were able to benefit from a grant from the SRP Walter Bergmann Fund that helped us to keep music alive in our community by enabling us to purchase a class set of recorders. That followed a successful grant application with NAPE (Oxford) for Djembe Drums.
Music - our impact
Music and singing are integral to the life of Checkendon. The children relish opportunities to create, play, perform and enjoy music, develop skills, appreciate a wide variety of musical forms, and begin to judge the quality of music. Through our music curriculum pupils gain enjoyment, self-confidence and a sense of achievement through musical activities. They acquire musical skills, knowledge and understanding of musical concepts through primarily active listening then performing and composing.
Listening to music
We listen to a wide range of music throughout the year, including western classical music, popular music and traditional music from around the world. We particularly enjoy Ten Pieces from the BBC.
Some music form our listening programme is shown:
A - Z of the BBC Ten Pieces composers
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John Adams - Short Ride in a Fast Machine
Short Ride in a Fast Machine was written for the opening of an American music festival and is a great example of minimalist music, using repeated patterns over a steady beat.
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Kerry Andrew - No Place Like
No Place Like is about home and place. The song takes inspiration from words submitted by children, giving young people the opportunity to contribute to one of the Ten Pieces.
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Grażyna Bacewicz – Overture
Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz broke new ground as she continued writing music while war threatened to destroy her country.
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Johann Sebastian Bach - Toccata and Fugue in D minor
Bach's famous piece, originally for organ, is written in two sections: the Toccata, a free-form introduction and the second part - the Fugue - with complex overlapping repetitions of a main theme played alongside different counter-melodies.
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Mason Bates - Anthology of Fantastic Zoology – Sprite; A Bao A Qu
This piece is a musical palindrome, and just like a palindrome word is spelt the same forwards as it is backwards, the music sounds the same when played forwards or backwards!
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Ludwig Van Beethoven - Symphony No. 5 (1st movement)
Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 contains one of the most famous motifs in musical history. Beethoven wrote this symphony when he was beginning to lose his hearing.
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Sally Beamish - Haven from Seavaigers
Find out how a sea journey between Dundee and Shetland inspired Sally Beamish's piece 'Seavaigers', written for orchestra with solo harp and fiddle.
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Leonard Bernstein - ‘Mambo’ from Symphonic Dances from 'West Side Story'
One of Bernstein's most popular works is a re-imagining of Shakespeare's famous tragedy 'Romeo and Juliet' into a New York gang warfare setting.
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Georges Bizet - ‘Habanera’ and ‘Toreador Song’ from ‘Carmen Suite No. 2’
'Carmen' is light opera with a serious ending about a beautiful girl who works in a factory. The 'Habanera' and the 'Toreador Song' from the opera are now two of the best known of all operatic arias.
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Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges - Symphony No. 1 in G major – Allegro (1st mvt)
Saint-Georges was the first Classical composer of African ancestry and was a champion fencer, conductor and virtuoso violinist.
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Johannes Brahms – Hungarian Dance No. 5 in G minor
Brahms was inspired by the folk music of Hungarian dances called csárdás. Listen out for each of the distinctive folk melodies.
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Benjamin Britten - ‘Storm’ Interlude from ‘Peter Grimes’
'Storm' is an orchestral interlude from Benjamin Britten's opera 'Peter Grimes' about a community struggling to make their living by the sea.
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Margaret Bonds - March and Dawn from Montgomery Variations
Get to know two variations from Margaret Bond's 'Montgomery Variations', inspired by Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott that became a catalyst in the American civil rights movement.
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Lili Boulanger – D'un matin de printemps
Explore the busy, hopeful soundscape of spring created by the rhythms and dynamics of Lili Boulanger's D'un matin de printemps.
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Anna Clyne - Night Ferry (extract)
When Anna Clyne settled on the idea of creating a piece about crossing a stormy ocean, she picked up a paint brush instead of writing music notes on paper and created a graphic score, laying out how she wanted her piece to sound by using swirls and sweeps of dark, violent colours.
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Aaron Copland - Rodeo – Hoe-Down
Originally composed in 1942 for a ballet called Rodeo, the Hoe-Down features two American square dance tunes and fuses evocative music and dance.
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Delia Derbyshire – Doctor Who Theme (original theme by Ron Grainer)
Delia Derbyshire launched a whole new world of music into everyone’s living rooms when swapped traditional musical instruments for electronic sounds in her arrangement of the theme for one of the most famous TV shows ever: Doctor Who.
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Antonín Dvořák - Symphony No. 9 in E minor, 'From the New World’ – Largo (2nd mvt)
Dvořák took inspiration from the folk music of his native Czech culture for his symphony which is all about place, discovering something new and experiencing new things.
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Edward Elgar - ‘Enigma’ Variations – Theme (‘Enigma’), variations 11, 6 & 7
Elgar's variations show how music can convey personality, an event, a memory or a moment in time.
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Reena Esmail - Sun Sundar Sargam
Learn about Reena Esmail's 'Sun Sundar Sargam' which draws on themes from Hindustani classical music and creates dreamy a conversation between sitar and singers.
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George Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue (excerpt)
Packed with Gershwin’s own dazzling piano solos, Rhapsody in Blue has become one of the most famous orchestral pieces of all time.
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Edvard Grieg - In the Hall of the Mountain King from ‘Peer Gynt’
Young boy, Peer Gynt is chased by the trolls and runs into the troll King but eventually gets away.
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George Frideric Handel - Zadok the Priest
Handel wrote 'Zadok the Priest' for the coronation of King George II in 1727. Amazingly the piece has been performed at the coronation service of every British monarch ever since.
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Joseph Haydn - Trumpet Concerto (3rd movement)
Haydn's Concerto for Trumpet in E flat was a ground-breaking addition to the trumpet repertoire.
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Hildegard of Bingen - O Euchari in leta via
The inspirational visions and soaring melodies of 'O Euchari in leta via' and other plainsong made Hildegard of Bingen an exceptional character in Medieval Germany.
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Gustav Holst -The Planets - Mars, the Bringer of War
Holst composed this piece in anticipation of the outbreak of World War One. It’s a march but an unusual one. Normally a march has 4 beats in a bar but Mars has 5 beats in a bar; tricky to march to!
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Cassie Kinoshi - the colour of all things constant
Explore Cassie Kinoshi's special commission for BBC Ten Pieces with words by poet Belinda Zhawi exploring themes of kindness.
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Marianne von Martínez - Overture ('Sinfonie') in C major - Allegro con spirito (1st mvt)
Delve into the musical community and symphonic work of Marianne von Martinez, and the fast, lively tempo and melodies in the 1st movement of her 'Sinfonie' in C major.
