How do I answer a 10-mark exam question? (A Level Music)

Once you've got a good grasp on your material, it's really useful to spend a bit of time thinking about the most efficient ways you could organise it. For example, if you are asked 'how is this piece a typical example of a baroque concerto', are you going to go through the work bar-by-bar listing things as you find them? Will you list ALL the harmonic features first? Or just write things as you remember them? There are two good ways you could choose to structure answers that can help you make the most of your time in the exam. (NB don't be afraid to start your answer with something as obvious as 'the composer achieves this effect by....' or 'this piece demonstrates such typical baroque features as...') - - - - 1) Especially if the Q is about a non-programmatic, 'music for its own sake' piece like a concerto, making a mental list of musical features (harmony, melody, articulation, rhythm, dynamics, texture, form) and trying to think of one example for each before going back to add more can be a helpful tactic for making sure you cover a variety of different aspects of the music and consider it as a whole. - - - - 2) If the piece has a story/theme/image and you're asked to write about how the music 'reflects' the scene/mood, you could try organising under subcategories of mood - for example, if you have a scene from a tragic love story, your mental categories could be things like 'longing' (maybe the winding melody or dense extended harmony), 'unrequited love' (harmony that does not resolve), 'sadness' (slow tempo, minor inflections, long rhythmic values) - don't be afraid to state the obvious as well when trying to paint a picture of the overall effect!