Queen and Madness bring lighter notes to Leaving Cert music exam

Freddie Mercury on stage with Queen during the Live Aid concert in 1985. Their 1975 hit 'Bohemian Rhapsody' featured in the Leaving Cert music exam on Thursday. 

The appearance of ‘It Must be Love’ by Madness brought a lighter note to this year’s Leaving Cert music exam as the exams continued on Thursday. 

The 2023 higher-level music paper was “fair and balanced” and played to students’ strengths, especially students who had studied their set works in depth, according to Ciara Coleman, teacher with the Institute of Education.

Most students will have been happy to see Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ feature as the 25-mark question on the listening paper, which has not been examined in depth since 2012.

Students who had studied the recording and instrumental techniques featured by Queen were rewarded with questions on both, she believed.

“Each of the set work listening questions asked students to identify some general features of the music heard and then some more specific questions relating to the respective works, be it Tchaikovsky’s programmatic writing in Question 2 or features of 20th century music in the Gerald Barry in Question 3.”

Due to Covid allowances, students only had to study movements 1 and 7 of the Bach, but both were examined on the final question.

“This was nicely balanced question overall,” Ms. Coleman said.

“Many students find the dictation question challenging on the listening paper but students who had studied their Bach chorale in depth should have found this dictation more manageable than those in previous years.”

“The English-language instrumentally accompanied sean nós excerpt was a slightly unusual choice and may have caused some initial confusion, but the questions asked were very much in line with what students will be used to answering on the Irish music section.”

Meanwhile, design and communication graphics, which was examined on Thursday morning, was also presented students with a fair and accessible paper, according to Robert Kiernan, teacher with the Insitute of Education.

“The Covid adjustment of answering one fewer question for Section C would have alleviated some of the stress of the exam hall and given students the chance to really apply their problem-solving capacity.

“The trends of recent years continued as we see a growing emphasis on the principles of conic sections and the interpenetration of solids, the latter making its first appearance as a long question since 2012.”