H2 Music Subject Requirements

Published Jan 7, 2020

Announcements

All applicants who did not obtain a pass in O-Level Music or Higher Music must go through a selection test comprising the following:

Performance of two contrasting solo pieces on an instrument (e.g. piano, trumpet, rebab, erhu, and sitar) or voice, lasting no longer than 10 minutes in total.
A Listening Perception Test consisting of short musical extracts taken from both Western and non-Western musical traditions. Applicants will respond through a series of short-answer and multiple-choice questions. The questions will require applicants to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the following:

Melody (e.g. articulation; contour; intervals; motif, theme, decoration, voice-leading, melodic devices and decorations, transposition);
Harmony (e.g. tonality, modulation, cadences, chord progressions, harmonic devices);
Key signature, accidentals and scales (including diatonic, chromatic, pentatonic, blues scale);
Time signature, tempo, rhythm, rhythmic devices;
Instruments of the western orchestra, instrumentation, tone colour, musical textures (including monophony, homophony, polyphony, unison, doubling);
Form and structure (e.g. binary, ternary, rondo, theme and variations, 12-bar blues, popular song structures, sonata form)
General music characteristics of Western (Baroque through 20^th century) and Asian (Chinese, Malay, Carnatic & Hindustani) music.

3. A Creating Task based on a given set of pitches, written for any instrument(s), with a performance duration of at least 30 seconds.

Information on O-Level Music Syllabus

For more information on the O-Level Music Syllabus, please refer to the O-Level Music Teaching and Learning Syllabus (pg. 13-26) for more details: