Building ability, love, and talent in Violin and Viola takes daily commitment. Your child will learn a deep level of listening, problem solving, expressing and storytelling, building structure/engineering, and so much more. The basic progression through the Young Learner program often can be the following benchmarks of study:
Beginner Levels
Intermediate Level
Advanced/Pre-College to College Level
Beginner Levels
- Standing, holding, posture, motor skills, ear training, building enjoyment, memorization
- Songs/Folk Songs, rhythms, bow distribution, left hand basic finger patterns, playing and identifying scale and arpeggios, staccato, detaché, legato, pizzicato, memorization, note reading, deep listening, phrase structure
- Baroque dance forms, minuets, gavottes, tone and inflection, marcato bow stroke, right hand bow lifts, extensions, trills, syncopations
- 2 octave scales/arpeggios (Major and minor), details in phrase & dance forms, all basic left hand scales/patterns, vibrato, details of articulation, shifting to 2nd and 3rd positions, collé, lancé, up bow staccato, advanced keys
- Thoughtfully using technique to make artistic decisions to convey different colors/emotions
- Early Baroque concertos and sonatas
Intermediate Level
- Building strong/soloistic sound, Baroque concertos, and student concertos from Romantic era
- 3 octave scales, introduction of etudes and double stops, shifting to 4th and 5th positions, spiccato and sautillé bow strokes, extensions
- Late Baroque and refined melodic technique, 5th/6th/7th positions, early Classical style, some Romantic style and supplemental pieces, etudes, technical exercises for left hand & bow styles, rubato, solo Bach, left hand pizzicato, advanced scales/arpeggios, 3rds/6ths/octaves
- Baroque sonatas, bariolage, beginning of more virtuosic techniques, supplemental Romantic repertoire, advanced double stops and bow techniques, intermediate/advanced concertos in Classical and Romantic styles (Accolay, deBeriot, Haydn, J.C. Bach, Handel-Casadesus), deep analysis between Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern bow and left hand style and sound development
Advanced/Pre-College to College Level
- Advanced Baroque concertos and sonatas; Kreisler pieces; Bach Suites, Partitas, Sonatas; Advanced etudes, Classical concertos such as Haydn and Mozart (violin) or Stamitz and Hoffmeister (viola)
- further analysis between Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern bow and left hand style and sound development
- Advanced pre-college etudes, Romantic and Modern concertos and show pieces (Bruch, Barber, Bartok, Hindemith, Kabalevsky, Lalo, Mendelssohn, Sarasate, Vieuxtemps, Walton, Wieniawski),
- Classical, Romantic, and contemporary sonatas,
- Advanced solo Bach (Sonatas, Partitas, Suites)
- String Quartet/chamber music repertoire
- Orchestral studies, techniques, and repertoire
- Advanced music theory
- Scales in 10ths, artificial harmonics, flying staccato, ricochet/saltando