Composing for voices

Many students compose for voice(s) in their GCSE and GCE Music coursework. This article is designed to help, especially with the:

• Handling of voices and textures for choirs and vocal ensembles
• Notating of vocal music
• Basic principles of word setting

Plenty of analysis of other composers’ music should underlie every student’s work (this is the rationale behind the sleeve note for Edexcel’s GCE Music Unit 2, for instance). The examples in this resource are also intended to support general historical and analytical work for listening and written papers.