The King's School Chester Music Blog

General: BBC GCSE Bitesize site (covers all four Areas of Study AND all twelve set works)

Music Theory: Three excellent websites are Musictheory.net, Teoria and the Dolmetsch site.

AoS1: Handel And the Glory of the Lord

A nice handy revision video

AoS1: Mozart Symphony No. 40 in G minor

From the BBC’s Genius of Mozart celebrations, there are many relevant recordings and videos available, perhaps none more so than this clip from an episode of Discovering Music, where conductor Charles Hazlewood discusses the whole symphony in some detail. Listen particularly to the first eight minutes, which focus on the first movement.

• Wikipedia article on Symphony No. 40
• Detailed article by Peter Guttman on Mozart’s last three symphonies
• BBC GCSE Bitesize pages on Symphony No. 40 (3 pages)

…and for a bit of light relief:

AoS1: Chopin Prelude in Db major “Raindrop”

AoS2: Schonberg Peripetie

AoS2: Bernstein Something’s Coming from West Side Story

Here is a video from Sony Music Entertainment, which can be watched on YouTube.

AoS2: Reich Electric Counterpoint

Final Movement

Second and Third Movements

AoS3: General

Chris Pettitt’s fantastic site has a detailed overview and analysis of all three set works.

AoS3: Miles Davis All Blues

Here is a fantastic post about Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, by Fred Kaplan.

[...]Kind of Blue is a one-shot deal, so dreamily perfect you can hardly believe someone created it. Which is why it remains so deeply satisfying, on whatever level you experience it, as moody background music or as the center of your existence. Listen to it 100 times or so, and you still marvel at its spontaneous inventions; now and then, you’ll even hear something new.

There are also some fantastic clips on YouTube that have been released to mark the 50th anniversary of Kind of Blue in 2009:

Here is a video from Sony Music Entertainment, which can be watched on YouTube.

AoS3: Jeff Buckley Grace

Here is a video from Sony Music Entertainment, which can be watched on YouTube.

AoS3: Moby Why does my heart feel so bad?

Here is the Moby animated video, which can be watched on YouTube. 

AoS4: General

More useful info from Chris Pettitt’s website.

AoS4: Capercaillie Skye Waulking Song

AoS4: Rag Desh

AoS4: Koko