High School Vocal Music

Student Learnings: What students should know and be able to do 

Singing, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music

• Students sing with expression and technical accuracy a large and varied repertoire of vocal literature including some songs performed from memory:
  • The student will assume good singing posture.
  • The student will understand the concept of expanded breathing and breath management.
  • The student will understand the concept of good tone production.
  • The student will demonstrate the use of voiced and unvoiced consonants.
  • The student will demonstrate awareness of the principles of vowel production.
  • The students will know and understand voice classification (SATB).
  • The student will understand the factors that affect vocal health and hygiene.
  • The student will understand the concepts of vibrato/non-vibrato tone production.
• Students sing music written in unison to multi parts with or without accompaniment.
• Students demonstrate well-developed ensemble skills:
  • The student will be able to interpret the expressive elements of a conducting beat pattern.
  • The student will work toward rhythmic precision and unity in a group effort to build a cohesive choral sound.
  • The student will understand one's voice and its effect on blend and balance in both large and chamber ensembles.
  • The student will demonstrate empathy, express willingness to be ethical and modify behavior in order for the ensemble to function.
  • The student will be aware of basic intonation problems (i.e., descending patterns, break area, range problems).
  • The student will maintain independence while participating in part singing.

Reading and notating music

• Students demonstrate the ability to read a vocal score of multiple staves by describing how the elements of music are used:
  • The student will understand the concept of key signatures.
  • The student will understand interval.
  • The student will produce rhythmic patterns in simple, compound and mixed meters at different tempos.
  • The student will be able to analyze the relationship of parts within a vocal score.
  • The student will know standard and extended vocal forms (i.e., masses, oratorios, contrapuntal, canon).
  • The student will control and use dynamic ranges from pianissimo to fortissimo.
• Students sigh tread accurately and expressively music of appropriate difficulty:
  • The student will demonstrate sight reading proficiency in multiple keys using the movable DO system.
  • The student will recognize visually and aurally the tonal centers and key signatures of major and minor keys.

Listening to, analyzing, and describing music

• Students analyze aural examples of a varied repertoire:
  • The student will compare musical characteristics of diverse genres.
  • The student will compare musical characteristics of diverse cultures.
• Students demonstrate a knowledge of the technical and expressive vocabulary of music:
  • The student will understand and demonstrate:
    • dynamics
    • tempo markings
    • expressive markings
    • style
• Students explore compositional deirses and techniques in a musical work:
  • The student will understand and demonstrate musical forms.

Evaluating music and music performances

• Students evolve specific criteria for making informed, critical evaluations of the quality and effectiveness of performances and apply the criteria in their personal participation.
• Students evaluate a performance by comparing it to similar or exemplary models.
• Students evaluate a given musical work in terms of its aesthetic qualities and explain the musical means it uses to evoke feelings and emotions.

Understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts

• Students will compare and contrast characteristics between two or more related arts within a particular historical period or style:
  • The student will identify similarities and differences in the meanings of common terms used in the various arts.
• Students explore ways in which the principles and subject matter of various disciplines outside the arts are interrelated with those of music.
  • The student will understand how the roles of creators, performers, and others involved in the production and presentation of the arts are similar to and different from one another in the various arts.

Understanding music in relation to history and culture

• Through performance, students will demonstrate an awareness of historic musical genre and styles and representative composers:
  • The student will produce choral music with a greater sense of historical style perspective (i.e., mass, chorale, chanson, oratorio, contatas, motet, madrigal).
  • The student will compare musical characteristics and elements of different cultures, times and places.
• Through performance, students will demonstrate an awareness of diverse and multicultural musical traditions.
• Students will demonstrate appropriate concert etiquette in relation to the styles and context of music performed:
  • Student as performer
  • Student as listener