Inside the Bookstore:
Finding Great RepertoireEvery music teacher has a collection of music books in their studio that they've never really opened. Hidden inside is probably mostly junk, but every so often...
But as any pearl-hunter will tell you, to increase the odds of finding more pearls, you need to increase the number of oysters. In other words, go through the books you already have, and then go get yourself some more.If you're spending less than half a term's tuition fees from one student on music books every six months, then you were never really serious about finding exciting new repertoire. (If that sounds like a lot, consider that losing a student because you could not find the right piece for them will cost you four times that much.)
So what sort of books? Every sort. Contemporary. Antique. Well known, obscure, illustrated, plain, easy pieces, challenging pieces, ensemble works, method books, compilations. Whatever. But the more, and the more varied, the better.
These are your oysters. But as for any pearl-hunter, simply being in the presence of oysters is not enough..you have to open them. Which means sitting down and playing through all of these pieces, making notes as you go.
You've now got a shortlist of "possible pearls". It's now time to find some students to test them on. Here's your new piece, you can tell them; it was hidden beneath cobwebs that covered a lost parchment that was discovered at a haunted house garage sale...
Do this twice every year, and I promise you that you will discover fresh repertoire that you might otherwise have gone through your teaching life without ever knowing about.
Believe it or not, music publishers are very much on your side in all this. Nothing is better for their sales than a book which is a hit with students.
There's not much you can do about books that have already been published. But you can help shape books of the future.
How? The next time you come across a piece that produces a positive reaction in your students, take a moment to email the publishers to let them know. If you can, let them know which type of students the piece was a hit for, together with why:
"To the editorial staff at ClarinetMax - Just thought I'd drop you a quick note to let you know that my young beginners (up to age 10) absolutely LOVE Exercise in Blue. It's one of those rare pieces that requires no nagging on my part to get them to practice it. Please let me know if you have any books with similar pieces!"
A couple of positive developments can come from this. At the very least, the good people at ClarinetMax are likely to reply, thanking you, and providing you with details of any other repertoire in their range that is similar. Perhaps there is a whole book dedicated to "Exercises in Blue"—it might transform your next semester with your students, and you might never have suspected that it existed otherwise.
The second development is that your feedback will have registered. Editorial decisions are taken by actual people, who can be influenced in all the same ways that you or I can. Be the voice that whispers in their ear today, and you might find your opinions being trotted out at an editorial meeting tomorrow.
Every year, for just six weeks or so, declare open a Festival of the Unknown Composer. During that time, students are only allowed to study pieces that you have never taught before, by composers that they have never heard of before.
So 
Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert—and the rest of the the usual suspects—will now be composer non grata.
Instead, allocate a letter of the alphabet to each student. The pieces they find are only allowed to be by unknown composers whose surname starts with that letter.
Of course, sometimes these composers are unknown for a reason. Like the thousands of forgotten (and often dreadful) symphonies that were composed in the 18th Century, but never see concert halls today because they have spectacularly failed the test of time.
So be ready for the fact that some of the pieces produced in the Festival of Unknown Compositions will be a little...eccentric. Or bland. Or just plain bad. But you will discover some gems too. When other teachers ask "Wherever did you find that?", you can just smile, and say honestly that one of your students discovered it.
After all, not all undiscovered music is drivel. The music of J.S. Bach was spectacularly underrepresented until a chance revival. Who knows? Maybe the student who was allocated "T", and discovered Archibald Tucker's hitherto unperformed Grand Sonatina in F might have unlocked another great genius.
(With apologies to any Archibald Tucker's out there who might happen also to be composers)
Before you get too obsessed with a pearls-only approach to repertoire...
A former piano teacher of mine asserted that there are no bad pieces. Just bad performances. That Horowitz could perform a volume of Hanon exercises and have an audience on the edge of their seats—in the same way that great actors could read telephone books out loud, and make all those names and addresses sound compelling.
I'm not convinced that there's no such thing as a bad piece, but I am convinced of this: how well composed the piece is is nowhere near as important as how well you sell it to your students. To that end, at some stage, you are going to have to play it for them. Otherwise all you have to convince them with are adjectives, which is a bit like trying to explain to someone why a movie is worth seeing when they haven't actually seen it yet—the description always sells the reality short.
As a result, if you have a lesson coming up where you want to fire up a student with a new piece, it's worth spending a little time in advance practicing it. If the piece is supposed to be exciting because of a knock-em-dead run near the end, make sure your run knocks-em-dead. If the piece has "hauntingly beautiful melody that is famous the world over", then don't just tell them—make sure your phrasing and projection of that melody is hauntingly beautiful.
While a do-it-yourself demonstration is by far the most effective, sometimes it's just not possible to play it yourself at short notice. In this case, you then have to go to plan B, which is to equip the student with a demonstration of someone else playing the piece (which is why the IMT Repertoire Browser allows students to hear performances while they follow the score) Give them details of a concert where they can hear it. Lend them a CD or a video. Email them the YouTube link.
Why is this so effective? Nothing is as strong a motivator as projection. The feeling of "that could be me...I want to sound just like that"
Once that particular gleam hits their eyes, whether or not the piece comes from an old cobwebby exam book, or "120 TechnoMax Baroque Hits - Volume 2" doesn't really matter at all.
For your very own library of help like this, visit the IMT Bookstore
Or go back to the IMT homepage