Inside the Bookstore:
Finding Great Repertoire
ost teachers aren't overly concerned about repertoire selection. I mean, they should be, but they're just not.
Now before you decide that I must be talking about other teachers, and that your repertoire selection is creative, well informed and inspiring, consider this: out of all the pieces for your instrument, the vast majority are works you are yet to see or hear, much less recommended.
In other words, you're not giving your students the best possible pieces. You can't possibly be giving your students the best possible pieces. You're giving them the best possible pieces out of the limited sample you're currently familiar with.
This article looks at how to discover the best of what's really out there, so that your students look at their new pieces with the I'm-so-excited-I-need-a-bathroom enthusiasm of a kid standing at the gates of Disneyland. It's time to go forth and start turning over rocks, looking in hedges, and opening unlabelled boxes, because the perfect pieces have a habit of turning up where you'd never think to look.
To give yourself the best possible chance of unearthing repertoire gems, you have to start thinking like a prospector. It's time to fossick.
That means going to other teachers' concerts. It means going to competitions and eisteddfods, even if you don't have students performing. It means talking to examiners and adjudicators about any pieces they may have heard recently that really seemed to fire up the students. It means turning up at the talent quests of your local schools. It means trawling YouTube for ideas and performances. It means building your own listening library into something that is truly a comprehensive survey of available works.
How much prospecting do you need to do? If you went to just two concerts or competitions each month for a year, you would be exposed to hundreds of pieces that you might not be currently familiar with. Hundreds of pieces. Some of them will be absolute swill. A lot of them will be solid, but forgettable.
And a handful will be absolutely brilliant.
Don't just marvel at how they had been hiding from you for all these years. Write down the details, and introduce them to your own students.
Going forth in search of repertoire is a smart way to get started. But there is actually a way to get the repertoire to come to you, like moths to a camping lantern.
The idea you're about to read would take some effort to set up—it would probably need the full support of your local MTA— but it is guaranteed to uncover repertoire surprises.
The plan is to hold a music competition, but one with a difference. In most existing competitions, the scoring system is based almost entirely around how well the student played.
Things are a little more complex than that in the competition we are creating:
Presto. We have a competition this time where the accolades are for great repertoire. You will have a roomful of music teachers fascinated to see what the results are.
So who are the judges? The other students! Arm them with scoresheets, and encourage them to write some comments. The feedback about repertoire will be invaluable.
The secret to the whole event being a success is to announce it well in advance. That way, students can spend a month or two hunting around for the Ultimate Cool Piece.
They'll know that they score an easy 25 points just for choosing something that nobody else thinks of, which will encourage them to think laterally.
They'll also know two other very important things:
1) That more than half of their marks are based on "how cool the piece is". Whatever that actually means. But the point is, they will come up with interpretations of "cool" that will surprise you, and you can learn a lot from their choices, and the explanations of those choices.
2) That their peers will be judging them. This gives them permission to choose pieces that THEY think will be cool, rather trying to second guess what an adult adjudicator might like.
Simply preparing your students for the competition will force you to go trawling for some off-the-beaten-path repertoire. Hopefully there will be a dozen other teachers doing the same thing, and the competition really becomes an expo of the results of those efforts.