Music in the Diploma Program

Why do Diploma Program Music? The DP music course is a rich and intensive course designed for the hobby musician particularly at the Standard Level (SL). At the High Level (HL) the course provides a bit more of a challenge and preparation for the student to enter a university program of study as a major or minor in music. The option might also include receiving humanities university credit upon entry into a program of study.

Why might someone opt to take DP music? It serves as your Group 6 (the Arts) and demonstrates that the student is a well rounded individual. The IB program is after all a Humanities program.

If a person's passion is music, it is also a good option. While I can write at length about the "strategy" of taking your sciences or math at HL, SL etc depending on if you want credit, if you want them out of the way, or if you will take those courses anyway in college because you are on a science track, I won't bore you. If you like music, take DP music. If you are up for a challenge at an HL level, take DP music. It is wonderful to take something for enjoyment and not purely out of utility. I can't stress this to parents enough.

For Students Graduating 2021 or before.

At the SL level, the course is very manageable. Teaching after the DP 1 is mostly differentiated to keep SL and HL students working at different paces. It is recommended that an SL student remain in their ensemble, after completion of the Festival performance in March, that may be submitted as Internal coursework "group performance." The student may OPT to instead be evaluated on solo performance OR Creating (traditional composition, jazz, electronic, song writing)

At the HL level, the course becomes more challenging. Students will submit a portfolio of 20 minutes of solo recital music, and three creating works (traditional composition, jazz, electronic, song writing). The coursework is challenging but the way the IB Diploma assessment model is broken up makes it attainable to be successful even if you are weak in a particular area.

All students will examine music of different cultures and compare them with the Musical Links Investigation (MLI) a 2000 word research media script. (website, blog, play, paper, etc)

All Students will study two major works over the course of two years. Haydn's Surprise Symphony, and Rachmaninov's Fantasy on a theme of Paganini for the rest of the syllabus cycle. HL students will test on both, SL students will test only on one.

All Students will take a general survey course of music history through the modern era and music theory through the common practice period and be expected to know musical styles and genres as well as aural perception.

For those graduating 2022 and after.

The music syllabus is undergoing major revisions. The course as it exists now will look completely different and will move towards an exclusively portfolio based course. More information about this will be posted to this site as it becomes available beginning in January 2020.