[Smt-talk] SIGHT SINGING BOOK

[Ildar Khannanov]

Dear Stephen,
 
I would love to look at it. Please, send me a copy (or a selection).
 
One thing I noticed while teaching ear training in Oklahoma and in Baltimore is lacking of materials for the first stage, first encounter. Ottman begins with Brahms and Bulgarian melodies. It is here where a student makes connection between what he or she knows as music (songs my mother sang to me) and what is to be learned. Folk  music is extremely important in the first stage, and I do not mean Balinese folks music. No, local tunes, songs, dances. The Beatles included. I remember myself solfegizing a song about Zaika--a Little Bunny, at the age of four. This makes a connection between the natural song element, national style and academic music. Kodaly supported that, and others. Proves to be the most important for composers and performers.
 
Later on, it is important to introduce melodies formed after real music. Ottman's tunelets are quite inadequate. They are all too short, within a period. In contrast, French collections, Dannheuser et al.. present melodies in a small or even large ternary form taken from either operatic or instrumental repertoire. The middle section is always diffcult to sing, but that is the sign of a good solfege. In general, if solfege goes easy, it means that we are doing something wrong. Solfege=suffering.
 
Best,
 
Dr. Ildar Khannanov
Peabody Conservatory
solfeggio7 at yahoo.com
--- On Tue, 7/17/12, Stephen Jablonsky <jablonsky at optimum.net> wrote:


From: Stephen Jablonsky <jablonsky at optimum.net>
Subject: [Smt-talk] SIGHT SINGING BOOK
To: "smt-talk smt" <smt-talk at societymusictheory.org>
Date: Tuesday, July 17, 2012, 7:12 AM



While the gang is knee deep in the solfege discussion I was prompted to inquire about any possible interest in a new collection of materials for sight singing classes on the college level. I have just finished a book I call Molto Cantabile! that is a compilation of  456 complete melodies drawn from folk, popular and classical repertoires. They are organized by difficulty into four semesters. I was inspired to do this because I have been using the Berkowitz book for decades and always enjoyed its Melodies From the Literature section. Recently I realized that today's music major knows almost nothing about the great music of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Many of my students do not even know the music of the Beatles because The Fab Four broke up twenty years before my students were born. So I realized that even though the bulk of the tunes in the Berkowitz/Frontrier/Kraft book are well crafted by those three gentlemen it was important for my students
 to have a working knowledge of the great tunes from
the concert history of the past three centuries. Because of the difficulty and expense of including copyrighted music I have limited the collection to works composed before 1923.


I would be happy to send you a PDF file of the index and some sample pages so you can see what is included in the collection. Unlike Ottman there are no unattributed tunes from foreign lands. All of the music has a title and composer (when available). Unlike Karpinski, there are no four-measure fragments. In most cases the tune is complete. If it is a symphonic excerpt you get at least two phrases if not more. It is my contention that students will work harder if they feel the content is worthy of their efforts so every tune has been hand picked by me with that in mind. Ten percent of the book uses C clefs and there are a sizable number of duets.






Prof. Stephen Jablonsky, Ph.D.
Music Department Chair
The City College of New York
160 Convent Avenue S-72
New York NY 10031
(212) 650-7663



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