Burgmuller opus 100 no 8 With Grace/how do you teach it?

[keyofc]

I selected the piece randomly since it's on the piano street forum sheet music.

What questions do you ask - when introducing this to a student?

I thought maybe (if anyone would like to) we could select a piece now and then
and say how we teach it.

I'm assuming you don't just give a new piece to your student and tell them to "practice it 3xaday"  What do you make sure they know about a piece before they go home to tackle it?

[gonzalo]

First of all the student must like the piece. Then one proceeds to teach it. Assuming we are teaching this to a beginner, let's look at the main difficulties of this study:

a. Making the embellishments sound even and clear.
b. Playing the chords in the second part may present difficulties to the student since they are tricky and are accompanied by 7ths.
c.  Achieving the sound needed to represent the title of the piece.

You can start by teaching the scales of the piece, so that you can explain the key signature, the modulations of this piece , etc. When teaching scales, you should also teach ways to learn and practise scales

a. First of all I "outline", that is I give the student a score with only the 8ths without the embellishments. Why? Because the student may have problems with the jumps between figurations and because the student can listen to the melody and ingrain it in his aural memory. We make sure the melody is played p ( he starts working on musicality from the very first moment). Next, I make him practice the embellishment alone and we try to get a clear and even embellishment. If the student is having difficulties with it, I make him apply repeated notes groups to that passage and rhythm variations.

As may have noticed, the patterns of the embellishments are quite similar to invention nº14 so, the way to deal with these can also be applied to invention nº 14

Again on the subject of evenness, it is important to point out to the student that in order to have an even sound you must do an uneven movement. We should not really tell a student “play even” since playing with even movements will result in an uneven sound. We should say “play so that it sounds even”.

Then we put together the melody and the embellishments and we learn the piece up to the repeats.

After that we memorise the chords alone, without the melody and try to get a good sound. Then we play the piece HT up to the repeats. It is important for him to understand that hands together is 37 times more difficult than hands separate, and also to understand that you cannot simply “join hands”, but a specific approach is necessary. So he is not only learning about the piece, but also learning ways to deal with specific problems that he could then go on and use in other pieces.

b.  The second part of this study needs a different approach. It is actually far more difficult than the first part. In it we find staccato chords. The way to deal with these chords is to apply repeated note groups to it until the chords sound nice.
In bar 11 we find sevenths in the LH and staccato chords in the RH. So, we work HS , and apply the same procedure as before. I always tell students to imagine their arms have been amputated below the elbow and that they are playing with a prosthetic (they never forget that one, he he!), so they must move the artificial forearm and hand with their real arm. This will make sure the movement needed to play chords come from the arms thus avoiding innacuracies, and it will teach the student to use the arms to position the fingers. Also we investigate mov. to achieve a good staccato.

Now all the above was done not in sequence, but more or less at the same time during the course of a lesson. We would talk about the theory and analyse the music; we would then practise a scale (HS), then we would do the RH of the outline; then the LH, then go back to a scale; then back to the outline and while he was playing I would be commenting on the analysis, and so on and so forth. After a couple of weeks he was thoroughly familiarised with the piece from a number of different angles. So we were working on a multiplicity of memorisations from the first lesson – students rarely realise this; but the teacher should always have a master plan that includes everything.
So you see, I am not just using this study to teach technique, but to teach different ways of learning as well.

Moreover, alternative fingerings are possible, so this is also a good opportunity to discuss principles of fingering.

Some of the notes are accented (RH), so this is also a good opportunity to develop the ability to accent a note in one hand while maintaining the other hand subdued.

As you can see from all the above, I use Burgmuller’s "Gracefulness” for a variety of purposes:

a.      To learn and practise the scales of this etude.
b.      To learn different approaches to learning these scales.
c.      To learn about music theory (key signatures, chords,etc)
d.      To learn technique (movements, touch,  fingering, and how they related to sound produced).
e.      To learn different practice procedures and how they may or may not apply to a passage (hands separate, hands together, rhythm variation, repeated note groups, outlining, working in small chunks, etc.)
f.      To serve as a learning device/stepping stone for a more advanced piece (invention nº 14)

I hope this helps.

Gonzalo.

[webern78]

First of all the student must like the piece.

Is it Norbert or his brother? In that latter case i can see that being a problem..

[gonzalo]

I forgot about this:

Plan to learn the piece:

Session 1: bars 1-2
Session 2: bars 3-4
Session 3: bars 5-6
Session 4: bars 7-8
Session 5: bar 10
Session 6: bar 11 (most difficult one)
Session 7: bars 12-13
Session 8: bars 14-15
Session 9: bar 16

I hope this helps,
Gonzalo

[keyofc]

Gonzalo,
Thanks for scratching the surface of this piece!

Really - thanks  a lot - very helpful.

[gonzalo]

You're welcome