There is activity in the Music Department each day from early to late.  With over 30 teachers, over 400 weekly individual lessons involving two-thirds of the school, a full class teaching and academic programme and all the consequent instrumental groups and choirs there is very much the feel of a 'school within a school'.

For most girls at Benenden, music is a hands-on affair, learning to love all sorts of music by playing and singing.  We have choirs and groups to suit all tastes and abilities ranging from string quartets to rock groups, soul singing to Baroque opera.  Inevitably our groups change according to need and time but two central components are Chamber Choir and the Hemsted Forest Youth Orchestra.  Currently over 60 girls, Chamber Choir sings to a very high standard.  Memorable performances include a lunchtime concert in St Martin in the Fields, singing (with orchestra), the Pergolesi "Stabat Mater", and some wonderful concerts in Paris.  The Hemsted Forest Youth Orchestra comprises the best of our own instrumentalists together with talented youngsters from other schools.  Its recent great successes include complete performances of Dvorak Symphony "From the New World" and Haydn Symphony 104, "The London".

Our weekly Friday lunchtime concerts are very well established and provide a friendly platform for all musicians to perform; there are also plenty of other evening concerts, formal and informal.  Every other year we combine with the Drama Department in a large staged work, the biggest of which in recent years was "Me and My Girl" with a cast of nearly the entire school at the London Palladium!  More recent productions include Purcell's opera "Dido and Aeneas" and Lloyd Webber's blockbuster "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat".

We are blessed indeed with the number, variety and enthusiasm of our Benenden musicians; only time and energy defines the limits of what can be achieved by these terrific young people.