Music Monday - Remembrance Day

Today in Australia it was Remembrance Day. 

At the 11th hour of the 11th month the whole country stops for a minute’s silence to honour and remember those who lost their lives in war. Red poppies are worn on this day. 

It is also customary to have a bugler play The Last Post before the minute’s silence and Reveille at the end. Both pieces are heavily based on the intervals of the perfect 4th and 5th – intervals which are notoriously challenging to sing exactly in tune.

It happened that today I was working at my school and so, along with the whole school population, joined the short memorial at 11am.

As at previous Remembrance Day services I was again struck by how very silent the students are on this day. It is a different kind of silence than an ordinary school assembly silence – a complete silence. A respectful silence.

 And then out of this pristine silence comes the bugle playing the Last Post - the repeated upward 5th - with a pause on the 5th each time. The minute’s silence follows. Then again out of complete silence comes Reveille – more upward fifths then an upward 4th. The focus of the whole crowd is on those sounds. There is no background noise. Then the Remembrance service is over for this year. We return to class.

My year 9 group are identified as gifted and talented in music theatre but they are mixed ability in aural and music skills. Interestingly, today all the students can sing the Last Post back to me with correctly centred pitch. And yet when we encounter the same intervals within their song repertoire, they are no longer all exactly in tune.

Why is this so? They hear the Last Post only once per year. Is it the iconic nature of the annual memorial which imprints itself in them? Is it because it is one of the few times in a year that they listen to a single line of sound with no background noise whatsoever?

How can we transfer this learning to other aspects of their musical education?