Dear Friends,

Last weekend I gave a presentation to the Maryland Music Teachers Association State Conference, with my session: “'If You Like That, You’ll Love This!': Repertoire Alternatives for Overplayed Pieces."

The genesis of this talk was the fact that as pianists, we have so many options for repertoire available to us, but I have observed while judging competitions, giving masterclasses, and listening to auditions that piano students seem to play the same few pieces over and over. In the session, I share examples of lesser-known pieces that could “substitute” for some of the more famous, overplayed pieces, thinking in terms of the pedagogical reason for assigning the piece in the first place.

One of the works I demonstrate in this talk is Mélisande, a short piece by French composer Mélanie Bonis (professionally, she went by "Mel" to obscure her gender). Bonis was a a student of Cesar Franck and a contemporary of Claude Debussy. Mélisande is a piece from a larger work called Femmes de legende (Legendary Women): a series of pieces, each named after a famous fictional woman from legend: Mélisande, Desdémona, Ophélie, Viviane, Phoebé, Salomé, Omphale.

There is a good, yet incomplete IMSLP page of works by Mel Bonis - but if you’re interested in obtaining scores of her music, I recommend checking out Furore Press, who has published 11 volumes (so far) of her piano music.

Throughout my ongoing exploration of works by composers such as Mel Bonis, Cécile Chaminade, Amy Beach, Maria Hester Park, and others, I have been pondering the question: how much creative expression has been lost to posterity by the stubborn belief that women were less worthy than men to study and learn the art of composition? Even well into the 20th century, woman after woman in Western classical music who showed promise as a child had her education and/or professional growth stunted, explicitly and solely due to her gender.

Even those who succeeded did so despite being a woman and did not necessarily pave the way to more opportunities for other women or change the minds of the men in charge.

For example, Joachim Raaf, the director of the Hoch Conservatory of Music, where Clara Schumann served as the sole female faculty member, said: “With the exception of Madame Schumann there is no woman and there will not be any women employed in the Conservatory. As for Madame Schumann, I count her as a man.”

Of Cécile Chaminade, first woman to receive the French Légion d'Honneur, composer Ambroise Thomas said, "This is not a woman who composes, but a composer who is a woman."

(I could go on, but this is a newsletter, so I'll stop there in the interest of space!)

I’m glad the practice of re-discovering works by composers outside the “typical” canon is gaining in popularity. Now that more of this music is coming to light, there are truly some gems to discover.

I'm always looking for new and "off-the-beaten-path" pieces and composers to discover - what interesting repertoire are you familiar with that you wish more people knew about? Write back and let me know!

Happy Practicing! 🎹

-Kate

In every newsletter I share one practice tip based on that month’s practice theme. October’s theme is “Note-Learning.”

Today's Practice Tip: Learn From the End!

One of the greatest gifts you can give to your future piano-playing self is to learn a piece from the end. Just yesterday in a lesson, a student played through a movement of a Beethoven sonata from memory; in the first third of the performance, she had a few memory slips, but as she kept playing, her confidence and authority grew. When she finished, she laughed ruefully and said to me, "And that's why we learn from the end!"

The way to learn a piece (or movement) from the end is to divide it into manageable sections and learn them one by one, back to front.

The reason this is effective is because, like the student I just mentioned, as you play, your confidence increases (because you started at the end and you therefore know it best)!

Also: learning from the end ensures that you will get to the more technically difficult parts sooner, giving you more time to master them. Most of the time, the piece’s most difficult passages are NOT at the beginning.

Learning a piece from the end will make it easier to memorize the piece when it comes time to do so (if you don’t already memorize as you learn), because you will be solidifying the END of the piece before you’ve even learned the beginning.

Whenever I show this method of learning a new piece to my students, they are suddenly able to make much more rapid progress in the note-learning phase of their pieces. Students tell me that they feel much more empowered to learn their music quickly, and that they especially appreciate knowing a systematic approach to this part of the learning process, which can often feel haphazard and frustrating.

This week’s exercise: For a piece you are currently in the “note-learning” stage for, write numbers into your score to create sections from the back of the piece to the front. The length of each section is entirely up to you; it should be a manageable segment of the piece. As an example, if you are looking at a sonata movement, you might have 6-8 sections, and if you are working on an invention that is two pages long, each section might be 2-3 lines long. Put each section break in a place where the texture changes or there’s a natural break in the musical flow.

Then, start practicing from the end by carefully learning the first section (at the end of the piece), and then, only after you feel secure with that, move on to the next section. Each day, review the work you have done on the piece up to that point, and then add onto it with new sections.

Quote of the Week