IB Music SL & HL

In the IB music classroom, students will:

• Engage with a diverse range of music that will broaden their musical horizons and provide stimuli to expand their own music making

• Connect theoretical studies to practical work to gain a deeper understanding of the music they engage with

• Communicate and present music as researchers, creators and performers

Four areas of inquiry will be covered:

• Music for sociocultural and political expression

• Music for listening and performance

• Music for dramatic impact, movement and entertainment

• Music technology in the digital age

Engagement with these areas of inquiry will take place across three contexts – personal, local and global.

These contexts invite students to move beyond familiar music material (personal context), to experience music from the culture or community around them (local context), as well as engaging with previously unfamiliar music (global context).

Students at SL and HL complete the following common assessment tasks:

• An exploration portfolio: Written work demonstrating engagement with, and understanding of, diverse musical material, along with practical exercises in creating and performing

• An experimentation report: Written work in the form of a rationale and commentary that supports practical musical evidence of experimentation in creating and performing

• A musical presentation: Finished works in creating and performing, supported by programme notes

In addition, HL students will submit the following project:

• A collaborative project: A continuous multimedia presentation documenting a real-life project, containing evidence of the project proposal, the process and evaluation, and the realised project, or curated selections of it