Ensemble
Ensemble
What is the aim of the Ensemble component?
Making music together is a distinctive and essential part of Music Medals. Leading the ensemble, counting in, giving appropriate cues, listening, balancing and blending are all vital skills that the Ensemble section of the Medal helps to develop.
Assessment Requirements
The Music Medals candidate plays an individual line in one ensemble piece for two, three or four players. Each line must be performed by a single player. Only the Medal candidate is assessed, and not the other ensemble members.
The piece must be chosen either from one of ABRSM's Music Medals Ensemble Books or from a list of repertoire from other sources. All the ensemble repertoire for each instrument and Medal can be found using our dynamic repertoire search facility.
Ensemble assessment criteria>>
Performance Notes
- All ensemble performances are to be played without the use of a piano, guitar or other harmonic accompaniment or a CD backing track.
- Repeats may be played at the discretion of the Teacher-Assessor or candidate. However, those repeats that are essential to the musical structure must be observed.
- Ornaments may be simplified or omitted – a more confident simpler version is preferable to a performance becoming unrhythmic.
- Teacher-Assessors may arrange the lines of set ensemble pieces – other than the line taken by the candidate – to suit the instruments available to them, taking into account balance, timbre and related ensemble considerations. This is to accommodate the range of combinations of instruments being taught in groups. See regulation 14g.
- Teacher-Assessors may contribute to ensemble performances by playing in a duet with the candidate at Copper and Bronze levels only, or by taking a line in a trio or quartet at any level. Information about Ensemble lines>>