Theme:   Music and its Words- how does Music express the Words?   And what effect does this Music have on us?

Students walked into School under a Banner Monday Morning Assembly, and were prepared to be inspired by Philosophy.

At Assembly we looked at the Effect of Music:  we watched that amazing scene when he hero in the movie Shawshank Redemption brazenly played the Sull’aria scene from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro to the utterly stunned inmates…. It had the same effect on the J.S. Assembly!  And Timothy Telford played a jig on his Violin to show how music can make you move.

Tuesday Afternoon was given over entirely to Music – with an engaging presentation and then challenge from Mr. Declan Fitzmaurice – which examined the way Words work through modern/contemporary music – especially looking at the Message behind the music.  The School then divided into six groups to go into breakout mode to take this idea further:  in these session, each group listened to songs and read the words at the same time, and saw how they worked together and what was the message really behind the song.  Mr. Fitzmaurice had really done a lot of work on this, and all songs worked very well.

When the groups returned to the main room, we had a ‘report back’ from a student in each group, which was excellently done.

Philosophy Classes during the week were devoted to listening to the students own songs, along with the lyrics and examining the message that was there, and seeing how well the words matched the music.

A great week: Here are some quotes from the students themselves:

“This song was fascinating because it got me to reflect on society’s values as people, as individuals….  That we are all born the same but are morphed by events in our lives that change our characteristics, emotions and life choices.”

“Music tells us about our lives, and who we are and how we grow as people.”

“All the songs had a similar theme…. They all focussed on reality and what is real; and all of them were in different styles.”

“I learned to listen to not just the beat of the song but to the lyrics too”