Did you take any online or correspondence courses to help prepare for your MTNA certification? I have been teaching piano for the past 2 years, and am interested in getting certified. I have a degree in sacred music, but know I need to brush up on some of my music history and pedagogy courses. Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

I took one theory course by correspondence, but the academy I took it from has since closed. There are a number of other universities now that offer on-line classes, though, so I think you could probably track down some in each of these areas. For pedagogy, I took one semester at our local university and then did a one-week intensive course through the afore-mentioned academy.

MTNA has recently revamped their whole certification program, streamlining the process and making it more systematic. I’m not as familiar with this process, but the PowerPoint presentation they have on their site is an informative way to get started. When I took the tests to demonstrate proficiency in pedagogy, theory, and history, they had sample test questions available that proved very helpful! Reading through several pedagogy texts and utilizing music history resources in your teaching are two excellent ways to prepare for the requirements of certification. Here are a few I would recommend:

Thinking As You Play by Dr. Sylvia Coats

The Well-Tempered Keyboard Teacher by Marienne Uszler, Stewart Gordon, and Scott McBride Smith

Exploring Piano Classics Series by Nancy Bachus

The Baroque, Classical, and Romantic Spirit Series by Nancy Bachus

Succeeding with the Masters Series by Helen Marlais

I know there are numerous other resources out there that would be especially helpful for a study in music pedagogy and history; please feel free to share any that you’ve used and found beneficial!

Several of my student’s moms commented on how much they liked the timeline that I used for our listening activity last week. This is one of the best timelines I’ve found! I love that it incorporates not only music history, but also little glimpses into other things going on in the world. Surprisingly, the timeline actually came from the back of the Hal Leonard Student Journal. I just tore out the pages and glued them together chronologically, then laminated it for durability. It has served me well for many years!

Each week, I try to think of some fun activity to start off each lesson. Hot on the heels of the previous week’s A Galaxy of Composers group class theme, I was inspired to do a composer-oriented listening activity with my students. I grabbed my favorite composer resource book (comes with a CD!) – Accent on Composers – and selected six famous works. The student was given a white board labeled as follows:

Piece:
Composer:
Time Period:

Then I played approximately one minute of each of the selections and instructed them to listen and see if they could correctly identify any or all of the above criteria for each piece. They were allowed to refer to the timeline, which contained almost all of the selected composers. Here are the works that I selected:

1. Hallelujah Chorus – George Frederic Handel – Baroque

2. The Entertainer – Scott Joplin – 20th Century

3. March from the Nutcracker – Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Romantic

4. Symphony No. 5 in C Minor – Ludwig van Beethoven – Classical

5. Spring from the Four Seasons – Antonio Vivaldi – Baroque

6. Hoedown from Rodeo – Aaron Copland – 20th Century

All of my students loved this activity! Even the ones that were a little hesitant at first were surprised at how many of the pieces they recognized. If they were stuck on the name of the piece or the composer, I gave them hints or pointed out certain elements in the recording that might help them identify the time period or the ethnicity of the music.

One of the things that prompted me to do this activity was the realization of how much of our time and activities are focused on doing and playing and mastering skills, concepts, etc. Rarely do I devote much time to music appreciation – just listening to and pointing out elements in music, discussing the composers, the historical eras. We do this a lot as we learn new repertoire, but there’s something different about taking a few minutes to listen to these timeless masterpieces. This is an activity that I’ll definitely be repeating in the future (with different selections, of course!).

Have you seen the new Alberti Publishing Company yet? Their first published product is a fabulous piano assignment book called The Right Notes that incorporates snippets of music history on every page.

Alberti Publishing has generously offered to give away 5 copies of their colorful assignment book to readers of Music Matters Blog. All you have to do is register on their website and then leave a comment below on this post. I will use a random number generator to select the five winners on Monday, June 1, at noon.

Here’s a cool extra incentive – any super sleuths who can identify the upside down illustration in The Right Notes Piano Assignment Book can also enter for a chance to win an iPod! Visit the contest page on the Alberti Publishing website for all the details. So, even if you don’t win a copy, you may want to purchase a copy and start investigating for a chance to win something even better!

This Essentials of Music website is a great place to get a brief overview of a variety of musical information. They have three primary sections on the site: Eras, Composers, and Glossary. The Eras section contains separate sections for: Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and 20th Century. Clicking on one of these leads you to further information about the Historical Themes, Musical Context, Style, and Composers of that era.

The Composers section includes a brief biographical sketch of the composer, a few musical examples you can listen to, and a list of works by that composer. The Glossary is a wonderful collection of all sorts of musical terms with little excerpts to further illustrate some of the terms. A wonderful resource for teachers and students alike!

Have you taken a little tour through the Adventure World of Little Amadeus yet? The site design is absolutely beautiful and I couldn’t help but explore all the options available to the visitor! In the Teacher’s Room of the Music School you will find a fun lesson plan, an illustrated Music Lexicon and a speedy game to test your knowledge of composition types! The Classroom of the Music School has some fun interactive learning activities and quizzes that are sure to engage students. If you visit the Mozart House, you can meet the family members and friends of Little Amadeus and stroll through the Adventure World to play a variety of games. Lastly, be sure to stop by the Post Office to sign up for the newsletter and leave a note in the Guestbook!

You must go check out the Keeping Score website, developed by the San Francisco Symphony! According to the website, “Keeping Score is the San Francisco Symphony’s national, multi-year program designed to make classical music more accessible to people of all ages and musical backgrounds. Keeping Score uses media in its most public and accessible forms to show that classical music can speak to everyone and instill a lifelong love of music.”

There are five individual sites you can explore: Primal Moves, Beethoven, Copland, Stravinski and Tchaikovsky. Most of the sites highlight a specific work by the composer and include a variety of articles, images and videos to help you learn about the composer. The sites are aesthetically gorgeous and technologically cutting-edge. You can follow along on the score while watching a video of the symphony performers or you can explore the instruments of the orchestra and watch a short video clip of that section playing a portion of the piece and much, much more! Absolutely fascinating! I know I could spend hours working my way through everything this site has to offer!

While searching for a music timeline tonight I came across this great site – The Classical Score. If you click the “Linear Display” links in the left hand column you’ll see a great layout, including World Events, Musical Characteristics, Genre and Forms, Theorists and Treatises and Collections, Composers and Major Works, and Hymnology. This is a fabulous resource for teachers and students alike!

Would you like to learn interesting tidbits about composers and the events surrounding their compositions? What if that info could be delivered to your e-mail inbox everyday and you could spend one minute of your time expanding your knowledge of composers and their works? If that sounds appealing, here is the perfect solution! A daily e-mail from Composers Datebook. Just sign up here.

I’ve been receiving these daily e-mails for close to a year now and thoroughly enjoy them. Just to give you an idea of what you’ll be receiving, here’s what came in today’s e-mail:

An important date for Copland and Bernstein

If ever there was a red-letter day in American music, November 14th must surely be it. For starters, it’s the birthday of Aaron Copland, who was born in New York City on today’s date in 1900 — and then there’s all that happened on November 14th in the life of Leonard Bernstein . . .

Here’s how Bernstein himself explained it: “I never forget a Copland birthday: two of the most important events of my life happened on November 14 — the first in 1937 when Aaron and I met for the first time . . . Now, I worried and complained terrifically back then and always took my troubles to Aaron, who would tell me to ‘stop whining.’ He seemed to have such complete confidence in me that he didn’t show a bit of surprise when on Sunday, November 14, 1943, I made a dramatic success by filling in for the ailing Bruno Walter and conducting the New York Philharmonic. All Aaron’s predications came true — And on his birthday!”

As if that weren’t enough, in 1954, again on Copland’s birthday, Leonard Bernstein appeared on a live “Omnibus” television broadcast, presenting Beethoven’s draft sketches for the opening of his Fifth Symphony.

Bernstein’s TV debut was a smash success — and led directly to his subsequent series of televised “Young Person’s Concerts” that brought classical music to millions of Americans coast to coast.

A quick, easy read – check it out and see what you think!