Let's Make Tudor Music

Let’s Make Tudor Music was runner-up in the 1999 Times Educational Supplement Award for Primary Music.

This publication contains 88 pages packed with ideas, including drama and dance as well as music making. The beautifully produced CD has 35 tracks for listening and for teaching. Books for the pupils are also available…

An exciting new Key Stage 2 education product brings a unique role to early music in the classroom. Produced in association with the Early Music Network, Let’s Make Tudor Music enables pupils to discover the joy of early music through a lively exploration of Tudor history and lifestyles, in the context of composing, improvising, appraising and performing targets set out in the National Curriculum.

The 23 themed classroom projects contained in the Teacher’s Book and Pupil’s Book are filled with real Tudor songs, dances and drama, listening games and other things to do. Children and adults with no previous experience gain the confidence to be performing genuine early music in minutes, using ordinary classroom instruments, but guided by the expert, authentic performances and unique Learning Tracks contained on the integral CD.

For teachers, Let’s Make Tudor Music contains clear and practical instructions, plus authoritative attention to detail and historical accuracy. For pupils, the lively Tudor atmosphere created in the recorded performances and illustrations gives them the chance to discover early music through the active enjoyment of participation and performance, and the exciting sounds of period instruments.

Flexible in format, Let’s Make Tudor Music can be used in a comprehensive manner to meet Key Stage Two music targets. But its step-by-step guidance makes it no less suited to non-specialist teachers wishing to broaden the scope of classroommusical activity, and use its stimulating materials in the context of a range of curriculum subjects.

The authors, Lucie and Roddy Skeaping, are leading early music and folk performers with the ensembles The City Waites and The Burning Bush. In addition, their celebrated workshops for schools, The Musical Mystery Tour, have introduced young audiences to early music and period performance in Britain, the USA and the Far East.

The Early Music Network is the national early music development agency, and is supported by the Arts Council. It promotes the understanding and enjoyment of early music and historically informed performances, and seeks to increase the understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of early music by an audience of increasing numbers.

George Pratt, Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of Huddersfield and board member of the Early Music Network comments: ‘The authors combine musical professionalism with sensitivity both as teachers themselves and to their unknown colleagues in the classroom – a rare mix, and one which teachers will find deeply reassuring.’