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Meet Anna Meredith, a modern composer who mixes clapping rhythms with orchestra sounds. Listen for repeating patterns, changing textures, and music that feels like a living, moving machine.
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(quiz starts below)
Fascinating Fact:
In Ten Pieces I, the Connect It film is listed as created and hosted by Anna Meredith, alongside Dev Griffin
In KS2 Music, listening to Anna Meredith helps you spot how composers build a piece using rhythm, layers, and repetition. You can describe what you hear by noticing tempo, dynamics, texture, and how patterns move between performers.
Key Terms
Body percussion: Making music using your body, such as clapping, stamping, clicking, or tapping.
Ostinato: A repeated musical pattern, often a rhythm, that continues through a section of music.
Texture: How many musical layers are happening at once, and how they fit together.
Frequently Asked Questions (Click to see answers)
Who is Anna Meredith in KS2 music?
Anna Meredith is a contemporary British composer who writes music for orchestras and also creates music using modern sounds, including strong rhythms, repeating patterns, and unusual performance ideas.
What is body percussion in music?
Body percussion is when performers make musical sounds with their bodies, such as clapping, stamping, and tapping, to create rhythms without using instruments.
How do you describe texture in a piece of music?
You describe texture by explaining how many parts you can hear at once, such as one rhythm on its own, two layers together, or lots of layers building into a fuller sound.
From which corner of the British Isles does she hail?
Wales
Scotland
Ireland
Cornwall
Her surname has a Welsh ring to it but she is Scots through and through
2 .
Her first major broadcast work went out over BBC television in 2008 ... and instantly reached an estimated audience of how many people?
15 million
25 million
30 million
40 million
This was partly because of the nature of the special concert during which it was played: see next question!
3 .
The BBC holds the world's largest music festival in London every summer, broadcasting each of several dozen concerts over a number of weeks. The final night is known as ... ?
Friday Night is Music Night
The Last Night of the Proms
The Concert of the Year
Music for the Millions
The 'Promenade' concerts were originally begun by Sir Henry Wood in 1895 (the year before Marconi demonstrated any form of radio or broadcasting to representatives of the British Government), but have since become famous worldwide thanks to radio and television
4 .
More than one of her works has broken fresh creative ground, including a concerto for orchestra with what form of soloist?
Player of the 'musical saw'
Bagpiper
Beat-boxer
Steel band (on oil-drum 'pans')
Quite a surprise!
5 .
In 2012 the National Youth Orchestra premiered Meredith's HandsFree. What was intentionally surprising about this performance?
None of the players were holding an instrument
Everyone was playing down their mobile phone and the overall 'mix' was relayed to the auditorium
None of the players were in the actual room where the audience sat
The music was made without any of the performers using their hands (e.g. to clap, click, finger or bow their instruments)
Yes, the music was all made using their hands, bodies and voices ~ but no instruments (and no written 'parts', either)
6 .
From Mozart's hunting-horns onwards (and probably before, too) musicians have enjoyed weaving natural and not-intentionally-musical man-made sounds into their pieces. Which of the following is genuine?
The Cuckoo, in pieces from Dacquin's harpsichord work of that name ... to Strauss' charming (if, to us, a little unfortunately-titled) polka Im Krapfenwald'l
Steam trains, e.g. Honegger's Pacific 321, Vivian Ellis' Coronation Scot and Sidney Torch's Wagon-Lit
Sandpaper and a traditional mechanical typewriter in novelty pieces by Leroy Anderson
All of the above
... And that's without starting on the work of Erik Satie, nor of the 1950s comic musician Gerard Hoffnung (who famously used a cafe-size espresso machine for the special effects in a dramatised cantata based on William McGonagall's wonderfully awful ballad The Great Tay Whale. And then there's zany bandleader Spike Jones (' ... and his City Slickers') with his cowbells and car-horns ... all great fun listening, in their respective ways!
7 .
Which of the following CANNOT be done by a human without special equipment?
Clapping
Humming
Tap-dancing
Whistling
You need shoes with 'jangles' (or 'clackers') on to make the specific noise; all the others can of course be done 'as-is'. (If you're one of the few people that doesn't know how to whistle ... too bad, we fear; there's little we can do about that from inside your computer!)
8 .
What was Meredith's first non-traditional composition?
Axeman for electrified bassoon
Wolves for sirens and synthesiser
Tides for recorded sound (waves, whale-song etc.) with nose-flutes
Cliff Face featuring live sounds of metal ladders and a concrete-mixer
The mind may well boggle! (See Axeman, just below the lower picture of her standing in the black outfit)
9 .
How does Meredith set about collecting her ideas for a new piece?
Sitting in front of her computer
With a blank sheet of music manuscript paper
With a blank sheet of graph paper
Sketching her ideas in graphic form onto completely blank paper
This appears to come across from the same Pitchfork article cited above
10 .
What was Meredith's progression of cities during her education and early career?
Glasgow ~ Birmingham ~ London
Edinburgh ~ York ~ London
Aberdeen ~ Manchester ~ London
Dundee ~ Liverpool ~ New York
These represent her schooling, university and music-college phases