I’m pleased to be contributing to the Schott Student Edition Series. Popular amongst teachers and students, this series is, first and foremost, intended with instrumental tuition in mind. Each book is edited in collaboration with experienced instrumental teachers, providing information about the selected composers and works as well as useful ‘Teaching Notes’ with plenty of practice ideas and interpretation suggestions.
Publications in this series aim to offer motivating teaching literature; from early elementary pieces through to demanding repertoire for more advanced music students. Featuring music for all instruments, they contain numerous original works as well as arrangements of favourite tunes.
Apart from major standard repertoire, the series also includes lesser known music and new compositions. And this is where my work fits the bill: I will be writing a series of books containing music mainly by women composers, continuing the work I began in my recent series, Women Composers – A Graded Anthology For Piano.
The levels of difficulty are classified from 1 (easy) to 5 (difficult) providing guidance to both the pupil and the teacher with regard to repertoire complexity.
The first completed books for this series are now available, and they highlight the work of Spanish Composer Narcisa Freixas and American composer Amy Beach. When I was researching for my anthology, I particularly enjoyed discovering the music of little-known Spanish composer Freixas (1859 – 1926). This new book contains a selection of elementary pieces which hail from her two volumes for children; Piano Infantil 1 and Piano Infantil 2.
Amy Beach (1867 – 1944) has written two piano collections for children; Children’s Album Op. 36 and Children’s Carnival Op. 25; they are included in their entirety in this publication and would be considered of approximately intermediate level.
Both volumes contain a fairly detailed composer biography as well as practice notes for every piece of around 200-300+ words, encouraging a well-rounded, organic approach to music study. These notes are printed in English and German.
Watch out for further books in this series which will be published next year.
You can purchase the books from all good online stores and websites including musicroom.com, prestomusic.com, and Amazon. Alternatively, click on the link below to purchase from Schott Music’s website:
You can listen to a selection of pieces from each volume by clicking on the links below:
Narcisa Freixas – Piano Infantil Volume 1 – L’ocell
Narcisa Freixas – Piano Infantil Volume 2 – La nina rossa
Amy Beach – Children’s Album Op. 36 – Minuet No. 1
Amy Beach – Children’s Carnival Op. 25 – Pantalon
Reviews
‘Attractively presented, let’s hope for plenty more publications in this series’
Pianist Magazine
‘Melanie Spanswick provides in-depth biographical information about Freixas as well as insightful teaching notes for each piece, both of which are written in English and German. These thoroughly written additions to the collection not only provide historical context but also inform the teacher of technical difficulties and numerous strategies to create an effective, successful performance.’
American Music Teacher Magazine
‘Special kudos must go to Melanie Spanswick for her notable and continuing contribution to the rediscovery of forgotten music by women composers, along with gratitude to Schott Music for supporting this worthwhile venture.’
