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One reflection I’ve had following Blackout Tuesday is the whiteness and maleness of the beginner piano rep I teach. I’m trying to address that, and would love any leads for great beginner music! Here’s what I’ve found so far:
I teach my students a mix of notated music and songs from chord sheets. While the latter is fairly contemporary and diverse, the former is taken from the great albums for the young by Bartok, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Kabalevsky, Burgmuller etc. https://open.spotify.com/album/3EXoGMXd1lY1x3BNeWBJMm?si=8Fkbe8paR62lvZNktWt5_g
Strikingly little of this is recent music: writing albums for beginner pianists seemed to go out of style amongst “serious composers” at some point. The wonderful work Thalia Myers has done in her Spectrum series is a major counterweight. http://www.thaliamyers.com/spectrum
These books have a great selection of rep from major composers and, from book 3 onwards, a more diverse fare than is usual. While there are few works by black composers, @Eleanor_Alberga‘s If the silver bird could speak is lovely. Kinda Messiaen vibes. https://open.spotify.com/track/7aL2Vkx9qwBUhkdNHzM8kc?si=bvTmByzISaat_1LDvjVTWA
I’ve been diving through her piano work, which is a really cool body of stuff that I’d really recommend listening to. https://soundcloud.com/eleanoralberga/sets/alberga-piano-works
That in turn led me to a fantastic resource. William Chapman Nyaho has put together a series of books of the Piano Music of Africa and the African Diaspora in five volumes, from beginner to advanced. https://www.musicroom.com/productlist/Contributor_composer_Notation_2/Chapman%20Nyaho,%20William%20H._contributor.aspx?IsFacetListRequest=True
He’s also got a wonderful series of albums on the same name. They feature pieces from big names like Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and George Walker and from composers I haven’t heard of yet. I’m excited to dig into this. https://open.spotify.com/album/0Ek2MOe3oScb5Fn39c8F57?si=NGgrOi5ERpei5_Kwr0a66A
Another exciting looking book is William Grant Still’s collection of Works for Children, which includes some strident, accessible and beautiful works like “Dance,” from A Deserted Plantation. https://open.spotify.com/track/0djncsyVqZklD2ko6c2QxV?si=vWh4o86RQj60ACe6o1gXrg
If, like me, you’re keen on getting your students singing while playing, you should also check out the Errollyn Wallen Songbook by @ErrollynWallen which includes charming, challenging songs at a good level for lots of students. https://www.editionpeters.com/product/the-errollyn-wallen-songbook/ep7888
These collections lead me to reflect that I would love somebody to be commissioning whole albums of graduated beginner works by a diverse selection of living composers. Music education is one of the largest parts of our “sector,” after all.
The Spectrum project is a superb start, but I want more stuff of the scope and ambition of Mikrokosmos out in the world! That sense of getting a flavour of a composer’s voice beyond a single work is an important learning experience of itself, I think.
Finally, let’s talk about the Big Name: Scott Joplin. Joplin must be the black composer most performed by beginners, but I think it’s got an unfairly bad rep as dated, light music. Joplin is, frankly, a genius.
If you can free your ears of silent movie cliches, it’s rich, sophisticated and compelling stuff. Kids don’t have our jaded ears, so let them fall in love with it for themselves.
I still remember a hot summer when I was 8 or 9, and first discovered a CD of ragtime. I put it on repeat while reading Kevin Crossley-Holland’s Arthur trilogy. Only a kid’s dumb brain could think those two go together, but they did, for me.
The point being: I’m going to try to give the kids I teach the same opportunity to make strange, wonderful connections. That means thinking more carefully about the breadth of what I teach them. Any ideas?
