Music GCSE: A performance of Mendelssohn’s 'Hebrides Overture' ('Fingal's Cave')

BBC Teach > Secondary resources > GCSE Music > Performances from the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

This clip complements another clip from our Classical Music playlist which features a workshop where young music students write their own compositions, inspired by Fingal's Cave, in workshops lead by the BBC Philharmonic.

This clip is from the series Performances from the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.

Teacher Notes

After watching the clip, ask students to discuss what musical features they noticed about the piece.

Introduce the idea of a leitmotif and ask students to compose a short melody that can be used as a leitmotif.

Once students have their tune, have them swap with a partner and challenge them to come up with different ways of creating a variation of their partner's theme, or a piece that incorporates their partner's leitmotif.

Curriculum Notes

This topic is relevant to GCSE, AS Level and Higher Music in the areas of Romantic, Performance and Understanding Styles.

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