Music 1 topics and electives overview: HSC Music

What this dot point is asking

Music 1 is the broader, more flexible of the two HSC music courses, and its flexibility comes from how you build a program from topics and electives. Understanding this structure is essential before you can study any individual topic well. This dot point asks you to understand how the Music 1 course is organised: how many topics you study and how you choose them, what the comparative study involves, and how your three electives across performance, composition and musicology connect to your chosen topics.

The answer

The shape of the Music 1 course

Music 1 is a 2-unit Year 12 course built on the same six concepts of music and the same four learning experiences (performance, composition, musicology and aural) as Music 2, but it is broader in repertoire and lighter in notation. The course covers a wide range of styles, periods and genres drawn from a syllabus list of topics, and students assemble a program suited to their musical strengths, which often lie in popular, contemporary and world styles.

Choosing the HSC topics

In the HSC course you study three topics. These are chosen from the syllabus list of topics, and the standard requirement is that they differ from those studied in the Preliminary course. An alternative is to study two new topics plus one Preliminary topic in greater depth, exploring new repertoire and including a comparative study. The list of topics spans areas such as Australian music, music for radio, film, television and multimedia, popular music, jazz, music of the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, music of a culture, theatre and music theatre, and more. Confirm the current full list of topics and the exact selection rules for your examination year against the NESA Music 1 syllabus.

The comparative study

When you take a Preliminary topic into greater depth in the HSC year, the study includes a comparative element, setting works side by side to trace how the topic's style uses the concepts of music across different repertoire. This deepens your understanding and gives your musicology a sharper analytical edge. Comparative study rewards careful choice of repertoire with meaningful similarities and differences.

The three electives

Alongside your three topics, you select three electives from any combination of performance, composition and musicology. Crucially, your electives must represent the topics you study, so your program is integrated: the music you perform, compose or analyse for your electives sits within your chosen topics. Music 1's flexibility shows here: a strong performer might choose two or three performance electives, while a student strong in analysis might lean toward musicology, and another might balance all three. This lets you play to your strengths while still covering the four learning experiences.

Building a coherent program

The best Music 1 programs are coherent, not scattered. Choose topics that suit your musical background and that give you rich repertoire for your electives. Align your electives with your topics so your study reinforces itself: performing repertoire from a topic deepens your musicology of that topic, and composing in a topic's style applies what your analysis taught you. Plan the whole program early so the topics, electives, comparative study and the aural exam fit together rather than competing for your time.

How this connects to the rest of the course

The topics are the contexts in which you study the concepts, and the electives are how you demonstrate the four learning experiences within those contexts. The aural exam, common to both courses, draws on the listening skills you build across all your topics. Understanding the structure lets you make deliberate choices rather than drifting into a disconnected set of pieces and tasks.