Category: Repertoire

Posted in Intermediate, Repertoire, Sheet Music

New Arrangement: Warlock’s Capriol Suite for Violin and Piano

Posted on by J Melin

Ever since Peter Warlock’s “Capriol Suite” for string orchestra entered public domain in 2022, I’ve been wanting to arrange it for solo violin so my students can enjoy its catchy Renaissance melodies and quirky 20th-century harmonies. I finally completed that project, and my arrangement is now available for digital download at Sheet Music Direct and Sheet Music Plus. It’s also available right here, at a discount!

This engaging suite of six Renaissance dance tunes, reimagined by Warlock (pseudonym of Philip Heseltine) for string orchestra in the 1920s, has been reduced to a solo violin piece with piano accompaniment. Suitable for intermediate to advanced violin players, the required techniques involve rapid tempos, spiccato bowing, some double stops, and expressive vibrato, with minimal shifting higher than 3rd position. The piano part is advanced. Depending on the violinist’s technical level, they could choose to play one or more of the easier movements (Basse-Danse, Pavane) or all six, including the unrelenting spiccatos in Bransles or the finger-twisting double stops in the finale of Mattachins. The highly expressive Pieds-en-l’air is a lovely stand-alone elegy, but with a title that will make students giggle (“Feet-in-the-air??”).

Here’s the source tune for Bransles along with a demonstration of its dance. Students can explore how Peter Warlock originally changed and enhanced the tune.

If you purchase this arrangement, I’d welcome your feedback! Drop a comment below.

Fiddle Folio for Etude Fun

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! My recently released, curated collection of fiddle tunes is currently on sale at Amazon. You can also grab a PDF copy right away via download purchase.

I put together this Fiddle Fundamentals Folio book to answer the question: “Why play etudes when you can play fiddle tunes?” Introducing fiddle tunes into students’ (or your own) etude practice builds finger dexterity, bowing agility, and sight reading skills while also being FUN! I collected 40 toe-tapping traditional fiddle tunes and arranged them by key signature and sequential difficulty, from beginning to advanced levels. First-position-only tunes can be played slow to fast while focusing on the following technical skills:

Finger Dexterity: Fiddle tunes require rapid finger action on one or two strings. Ornamentations increase the speed of finger dropping-and-lifting and can train a light, tension-free touch. Students can learn preparatory double-stop technique through the focus on “quiet fingers” that stay put as long as possible. Guidance for turning tunes into finger exercises will get fingers flying faster and more accurately in no time!

Bowing Agility: Use fiddle tunes to focus on left side/right side coordination. The characteristic rapid string changes and off-beat slurs call for a relaxed, flexible technique and mindset.

Sightreading: Fiddle tunes can be deceptively simple to play at sight. The trick is in maintaining full-speed tempos, bowings, and ornaments while always reading at least one note ahead. The 40 tunes in this book will provide lots of fresh music to play, and resources are included to find even more.

Improvisation: Traditional techniques for adding slurs and ornaments allow the musician to play a tune differently each time. Preparatory scales and arpeggios are provided for each key, with introductory chord theory and chords for every tune, to help bridge players towards harmonic and chordal improvisation.

Here’s the table of contents.

If you can’t wait to get your hands on some tunes to play this weekend, you can purchase a PDF copy below. It doesn’t have a fancy cover like the book you can buy on Amazon, but the inside looks exactly the same! I would love to hear your comments after you’ve used the book! Sláinte!

Download “Fiddle Fundamentals Folio” PDF for $8.50

or    Purchase bound book version on Amazon

(Hey! If your taste tends more towards the classical, you might be interested in my Orchestral Excerpts for Intermediate Violinists book for a different approach to non-traditional etudes!)
Posted in Repertoire, Sheet Music, Videos

Intermediate Violin Piece Discovery – “Adoration” by Florence Price

Posted on by J Melin

It’s International Women’s Day and we just celebrated Black History Month. The perfect time to share a very special new-to-me piece that’s already been warmly received at a student’s masterclass and a recital.

While I was viewing a YouTube performance of a Gershwin piece by violinist Randall Goosby for a student’s reference, the playlist popped up this compelling interpretation of Florence Price’s “Adoration” by Goosby with pianist Zhu Wang. I got goosebumps! (no pun intended) The arranger’s name was in the YouTube description, so it was easy to verify that this very same arrangement was available on IMSLP.org.

Composed by Florence Price (1887-1953) in the 1950’s for the organ, “Adoration” was apparently discovered in 2009 in a box of her compositions that had been previously considered lost. According to IMSLP.org, the piece “failed to meet notice or renewal requirements to secure statutory copyright with no ‘restoration’ under the GATT amendments” and therefore is in the public domain. It has been arranged for violin and piano by Elaine Fine, who has generously provided it for free download and distribution under the Creative Commons license.

Get your own copy here! The arranger has also published versions for viola or cello with piano. She notes in the IMSLP description, “This piece sounds particularly nice on the viola.”

If you liked this post, you might also want to read about other Contemporary Classical Pieces for Intermediate Violin Players.

Check out my published arrangements at SheetMusicPlus.com!

Posted in Printables, Repertoire, Sheet Music, Teaching Aids, Videos

Valentine Special – Salut d’Amour Study Edition

Posted on by J Melin

Salut d’Amour, a salon piece by Edward Elgar, is a favorite for students who enjoy its unabashedly romantic vibe and mandatory expressive shifting. I place it at advanced-intermediate Level 6, where it is technically comparable to the Accolay Concerto or Haydn Concerto in G. I teach the version in the original key of E, not transposed to D which is also available. Because Salut d’Amour is in the public domain (published in 1899), early editions in both D and E are freely available on sheet music websites like IMSLP.org.

But the public domain editions have some troublesome fingering notations. Some fingerings are awkward, some are missing details (at 4 before E, is it 1st finger in 1st position or 5th position?), some suggest 4th finger when 3rd would allow a stronger vibrato. In the overall style, there seem to be more expressive shifts implied in the fingerings than are really appealing to a 21st-century ear – like, twice in Bar 11.

When I listened to recordings for guidance, it didn’t seem like the artists were shifting quite as often as indicated by the fingerings. Nor were they playing the last two lines exclusively in high positions on the G, D and A strings. (Most student instruments don’t sound their best played high on these strings either.)

Daniel Hope’s lovely modern performance here inspired some shifting choices in the study edition.

I just assigned Salut d’Amour to two students, one a young teen and the other an adult. I spent the first lessons on the piece once again transferring all my hand-written fingering suggestions to their undersized public domain PDFs. Finally the light dawned, and I decided to start again from scratch with a newly transcribed part in MuseScore, to which I could add as many of my fingerings and position clarifications as I liked.

Sample of the violin part of the Study Edition

The result still fits on one page! Along with larger finger-numbers, I added position designations in Roman numerals, and slide-marks where it’s most tasteful to add an expressive shift. I’m calling the result a “Study Edition” due to all these extra markings. Once a student has incorporated them into their playing, they can go back to reading a vintage edition. No changes were made to the piano part, and all rehearsal letters are in their traditional positions.

I’m posting this for sale at SheetMusicPlus.com for $5.99, but you can download a copy here for just $2.99. Enjoy it with the instrument you love!

Download Salut d’Amour

And, here’s more violin repertoire for intermediate students.

Posted in Repertoire, Sheet Music

Hooray for Public Domain!

Posted on by J Melin

On January 1, 2022 in the United States, Peter Warlock’s “Capriol Suite” for string orchestra marked its delayed entrance into the public domain. Published in 1926, it has finally cleared the benchmark of “96 years from publication” to be legally copied and distributed without a royalty payment. Prior to the United States Congress’ infamous 1998 “Sonny Bono Copyright Term” extension of its 1976 “Mickey Mouse Act,” the piece would have entered public domain in 2002. I have been holding onto an {ahem} illegal photocopy of the score since around 2010. Now I can finally introduce this piece to a student ensemble for just the cost of copy paper and printer toner.

The Queen of PD

The mother of all public domain sheet music websites is IMSLP.org. Here is their page for the Capriol Suite. The world owes a debt of gratitude to IMSLP’s founder for his persistence in building this treasure trove of heritage music, over barriers thrown up by music publishers. Today there are 625,000 scores (and counting) on the site. Not just solo and chamber music, but all the parts to major orchestral works! I’ve used it to practice an orchestral part before I’ve been issued my hard-copy of the music. A $28/year subscription to the site helps you bypass a 15-second delay when accessing sheet music. Be sure to follow your country’s public domain restrictions before downloading any scores. Continue reading “Hooray for Public Domain!” →

Posted in Repertoire

Contemporary Classical Pieces for Intermediate Violin Players

Posted on by J Melin

Read to the end for a favorite but forgotten student selection to download!

(This post contains some affiliate links to sheet music sources.)

The leveled repertoire lists that I use with violin students are a work in progress. Starting with syllabi from ASTA, RCM and the Suzuki book series, I built a ladder of 11 progressive levels for technique and repertoire. As I discovered more resources, I wove in selections from Kurt Sassmannshaus, Mimi Zweig and Dorothy Delay, until now I have more repertoire options for each level than any student could possibly learn before moving forward. 

I’ve always been underwhelmed with the “Contemporary” selections in the widely-used syllabi, most of which don’t appear until the advanced levels. They include some music I don’t personally enjoy playing myself, which makes it hard to teach them with enthusiasm to students. And most of these lists stop at music composed in the 1930s. 90 years on, isn’t it time we opened the category to a few new classics?

When I hear appealing new music at recitals, on YouTube, on my local classical music station or even at the movies, I try to check it out for pedagogical suitability. (You can peek at lots of modern sheet music from online retailers, even if you aren’t ready to purchase it.) Since the intermediate technical levels are especially devoid of appropriate 20th and 21st-century music, I really like finding selections that are playable by these students. Here are a few student-tested-and-approved pieces you may want to try out too! Continue reading “Contemporary Classical Pieces for Intermediate Violin Players” →

Posted in Lesson Plans, Printables, Repertoire, Sheet Music

Pachelbel Canon – Study Edition

Posted on by J Melin

Is this the opening of the most overplayed piece in the violin repertoire? Probably! Does that mean that violin students should not have an opportunity to learn this Greatest Hit of Classical Music for themselves? Of course not! If piano teachers can keep teaching Für Elise, we can keep teaching The Pachelbel!

My students GET to learn The Pachelbel when they reach the equivalent of Suzuki Book 4. And most of them LOVE it. Many transferable skills can be taught using this piece: Counting in 8/8, note values from dotted-quarter-notes to thirty-second-notes, a little bit of 3rd position shifting, ensemble playing with two other partners, even Baroque performance practice if desired.

I learned this piece in high school from the Max Seiffert edition. For sentimental reasons and because it is in the public domain, this is the version I use with students. Because I teach this piece so frequently and repeat myself every time, I wrote down my usual spiel as Study Notes at the end of the piece. I also added handy section lettering every two measures, so it is easy to stop and start with a trio of intermediate students. I cleaned up some of the extraneous articulations and inconsistent bowings. The engraving is still a little scratchy, because this is the version that you can still download for free from IMSLP.org. I offer my Study Edition for a nominal charge here! This helps me maintain this site.

If you enjoyed using this resource, please check out some of my other repertoire publications for sale at SheetMusicPlus.com. Thank you!