GCSE Music: How do music grades relate to the performance element?

Our mark schemes don’t specify a particular grade for performance pieces.

The difficulty is given a mark out of six, and interpretation can elevate or lower the difficulty, depending on if a student embellishes the piece or simplifies it.

The difficulty descriptors are in the specification. Using those pages, check that the piece covers the given bullet points. Use the best fit approach – if the piece fits most of the points, it could well be a higher scoring piece.