Pieces I Enjoyed Teaching in 2007

Below are some pieces and/or collections that brought me great piano-teaching joy this past year. (I've also added a little random commentary.) One of the immense pleasures of teaching younger students is taking them on new journeys into exciting repertoire. It is especially gratifying if you get to be the one to expose them to music that is unfamiliar yet attractive to them. I hope I can inspire at least a few teachers to take a leap into some of the less well-known (and often underplayed) late-intermediate to early-advanced repertoire. There’s a lot more out there than just the obligatory canonic standards, and kids often respond eagerly to a teacher with some sense of adventure in choosing the next “big project”.

Bagatelles - Opus 5 By Alexander Tcherepnin (1899-1977). Op. 5. Collection for solo piano. Series: Alfred Masterworks Editions. 31 pages. Published by Alfred Publishing. (AP.551) SMP Level 8 (Early Advanced); NFMC Level: Difficult Class 2 See more info...

Every piano teacher worth her salt knows this set of works but many of us don't get past teaching the first one. It's a great little number but, folks, there are nine more beautiful pieces in the book! If you find a student who likes the aggressively playful style of Tcherepnin's piano writing, turn the pages and keep exploring. I have been teaching the seventh bagatelle ("Prestissimo") which requires soft but very fast staccato techniques and chromatic scales in major sevenths. You need a quite musically sophisticated student to tackle the intricacies of the slower bagatelles (Nos. 4 and 5) - I'm hoping to get to one of those next year.

Complete Lyric Pieces For Piano By Edvard Grieg (1843-1907). Collection for solo piano. 211 pages. Published by Dover Publications. (AP.6-26176X) See more info...

Selecting suitable Romantic works for those students just getting into the advanced repertoire can be very tricky. Oftentimes Chopin is a little too difficult and you can pretty much forget Brahms and Liszt. If you're looking to get a little bit beyond Schumann's well-worn Album for the Young but see your student merely struggling with the waltzes, preludes, and small polonaises of Chopin, one of the composers to look to is Grieg. These 66 character pieces range from fairly simple to incredibly complex, not just in technical terms but also in emotional content. Many young pianists only play the charming "Arietta" (the first piece of the set in Op. 12) and the ultra-silly "Elves Dance" (also from Op. 12) before they move on to the, ahem, higher-quality music of Chopin and Liszt. Nonsense! Try looking at the music in Op. 38, which already steps into more advanced musical territory. I taught an absolutely luscious piece from this set, "Melodie", which demands subtle phrasing, a good sense of rubato, and rhythmic independence between the hands. Be careful - this piece requires the student to pull off an effective three-against-four rhythm in several places!

If you are truly daring, you'll venture into the later works from Op. 57 onwards. There are some rather strange evocations in quite a few of these works, and some of the pieces even suggest a little of the harmonic perfume found in Scriabin. They won't appeal to every student, but the occasional one who does gravitate towards this literature will offer some really neat opportunities for the teaching of creative and fun interpretation. I'm looking forward to teaching a delicate piece from Op. 62 called "Sylph" ("Sylph" refers to a mythological spirit or elemental of the air), which I assigned to a student a few weeks ago. Yes, the music is a little strange, but it's such fine strangeness.

Lyric Pieces for the Young Piano Solo. By Norman Dello Joio. Piano. 16 pages. Published by Marks. (9283) See more info...

This is another set of lyric pieces, this time by the great American composer Norman Dello Joio. Now here's a composer whose music deserves to be played more often. These pieces (published in 1971) are cast in the tradition of Grieg's lyric pieces: they are brief, evocative character pieces that provide many opportunities for coloristic shading and expressive playing. I have shared three of these with a student this past year. No. 2 ("The Prayer of the Matador") is a study in playing an exquisitely intense Spanish-style melody over a relentless, but very slow, habanera accompinament. It requires a student with a wide emotional imagination - one can sense the private terror of the matador's heart through the heat in the melody's expressive gestures. No. 3 ("Street Cries") is all exuberance and fanfare demanding fine rhythmic incisiveness and control; the last piece of the set, No. 6 ("Russian Dancer"), offers some bitonal moments along with a generous amount of foot-stomping fun in the principal theme. The entire set of six pieces would make a wonderful performance segment in recital.

Jazz, Rags & Blues - Book 4 (9 original pieces for the late intermediate pianist) Music by Martha Mier. Collection for solo piano. 24 pages. Published by Alfred Publishing. (AP.18770) See more info...

Most young piano students hanker for a good romp in jazz and ragtime music, so I will end this little list with something from that side of the piano music world. Kids are naturally attracted to jazz and swing idioms, so it's only in the teacher's best interest to encourage some material outside of the "eat-your-vegetables" classical pieces and method books. Teachers now really have no excuse, especially since the last decade has seen a virtual explosion of high-quality original repertoire for the late-intermediate to early-advanced pianist. Martha Mier will be no stranger to the piano teacher who has paid attention to the new supplemental books by the ever-growing community of composer-pedagogues such as E.L. Lancaster, Eugenie Rocherolle, and Phillip Keveren. The great thing about a series such as this one by Martha Mier is the fact that it is offered in distinct levels, which can help the teacher match pieces to abilities fairly easily. I've only taught one piece from the book so far; it's called "Katy's Dance". It's an effective tap-dance number, and my student who played it loved the cool solo lines with "blue" notes and other swaggering figuration. It may be too easy for more advanced students, but it's perfect for those just "graduating" from a method series.

So there we have it - just a small sample of neat repertoire that I got to teach last year. For those who teach - just remember that you can make life more fun for your students through repertoire choices...you might even have some more fun yourself.

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Piano Music of Africa now available

There is wonderful news from Oxford University Press: A new anthology of piano music by composers of Africa and the African Diaspora is becoming available over the next few months. The anthology is edited by Dr. William Chapman Nyaho, who has been featured on this blog before. He deserves great credit for the important work of collecting and presenting such a valuable resource. As far as I know, I don't think there has ever been a serious resource for African piano music until now. I thank William Zick for alerting my attention to this project.

The first two volumes are available for order now from OUP's US site through a current promotion. There will be a total of five volumes that are graded from early-intermediate to advanced levels. I think that this offering will be a timely and tremendous addition to the contemporary piano repertory for both teachers and students. The fact that there are offerings at the early-intermediate and intermediate levels confirms that Nyaho and OUP are intent on a wide reception of these works.

I'll be ordering my copies this week!

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Bach Repertoire with “Training Wheels”

So you say that you are into Bach. You love the Well-Tempered Clavier, the Two- and Three-part Inventions, the Partitas, the Suites, etc. You’ve had two years of class piano and one year of private lessons. You think Glenn Gould and Rosalyn Tureck are major deities. What repertoire of the German contrapuntal master should you attempt first?

Many students make the mistake of starting their rewarding relationship with Bach by going too far on the “first date.” A particularly enthusiastic Bach worshipper might love to jump right into the Inventions, or one of the preludes from the WTC, or even a sarabande from one of the Partitas.

Before long, this student is tearing out her hair because it just isn’t working: it is taking months to learn one page, the coordination of the hands is making your mind numb, and what fingering should be used for this 16th-note passage? Well, most likely the answer is that the chosen piece is just too difficult for you at the present moment. Why not start off learning some of the simpler Bach pieces, the ones that Bach himself thought were good enough for introducing his musical style without thoroughly overwhelming the inexperienced player?

There are three major sources for Bach’s famous teaching pieces:

1. First Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, 1722 (all works by J.S. Bach.)
2. Second Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, 1725 (works by Bach and other composers, some unknown.)

These notebooks were music collections (in manuscript) presented to Bach’s second wife, Anna Magdalena. There are a lot of distinct dance-style pieces (marches, minuets, bourrées, polonaises, rondeaux, etc.) as well as pieces from traditional instrumental/vocal genres (preludes, sonatas, chorales, arias, etc.)

3. Little Clavier Book for Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, 1720.

This book also contains many diverse pieces by Bach; some of these pieces may have also been written by W.F. Bach or other composers of the era. It was used primarily as an instruction book for Bach’s son (Wilhelm Friedemann).

While it is obvious that a lot of these pieces were intended to be instructional, they remain some of the most musically sophisticated and intricate examples of early intermediate repertoire even today. They are delightfully contrapuntal but do not sport the complexity found in the inventions, fugues, and other advanced repertoire. These pieces work great as a “prelude” (pun intended, sorry) to the next level of Bach’s repertoire.

There are many good collections available from music publishers that simplify the learning process through a carefully graded selection process. One of the best of these collections is presented below (with a link to the book at Sheetmusicplus.com):

Johann Sebastian Bach: An Introduction to his Keyboard Music Composed by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), edited by Willard A. Plamer. Instrumental solo book and performance CD for piano solo. Series: Alfred Masterwork Library CD Editions. 64 pages. Published by Alfred Publishing. (AP.24456) See more info...

I’ve used this particular collection for many students and find it to be very useful for many reasons: There is a nice preface on Bach’s life, a solid tutorial on ornamentation and stylistic practices, and there are good fingering, dynamic, and tempo suggestions in the pieces themselves.

If you are committed to owning more complete editions of the original sources and can handle (hopefully with some guidance from an informed teacher) selecting repertoire at your proper level of difficulty, below are some collections from respected publishers:

Johann Sebastian Bach: Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach Figured bass by Siegfried Petrenz, composed by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), edited by Ernst-Gunter Heinemann. Collection for Piano (Harpsichord), 2-hands. Urtext edition-paper bound. 65 pages. Published by G. Henle. (HE.349) See more info...

Little Clavier Book By Johann Sebastian Bach. Edited by Willard A. Palmer. For Piano. Piano Collection. Alfred Masterwork Edition. 0. Masterwork. Level: Intermediate / Late Intermediate (grade 4/5/6). Book. 64 pages. Published by Alfred Publishing. (603) See more info...

Johann Sebastian Bach: Notebook For Wilhelm Friedemann Bach Composed by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), edited by Wolfgang Plath. Collection for solo piano (or harpsichord). Urtext of the New Bach Edition. 119 pages. Published by Baerenreiter-Ausgaben (German import). (BA.BA5163) See more info...

If you start your Bach keyboard study with these pieces, with some dedicated work and practice you will gain familiarity with Bach’s style and the coordination necessary for proceeding into the Inventions, Preludes and Fugues, and the suites.

I was originally inspired to write a post about Bach’s easier repertoire through this interesting inquiry and exchange on my post about “chunking” Bach’s first invention. It goes to show that people are indeed benefiting from blog posts regarding good practice techniques and other pedagogical matters. More posts on repertoire and practice techniques will follow at this blog in coming months.

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