Preparing Young Violin Students to Play Contemporary Music

When students finish the Suzuki books and enter college as music majors, contemporary music can seem new and scary. Often the notation can appear frighteningly different, and the sounds are unlike anything they had been trained to produce. It can be unfamiliar because students haven’t been given the tools to understand it. The techniques built into the Suzuki repertoire present students with a solid foundation for playing music from the Baroque and Classical eras, and there are wonderful compilations of Romantic student pieces readily available. Yet, fewer teaching resources exist for the realm of contemporary classical music, causing many teachers to avoid it altogether. But it doesn’t have to be this way! As teachers, we can give students the tools to play and appreciate contemporary music from early on in the learning process. I have compiled some beginning ideas for how we can approach this in this article.

There are many reasons to introduce students to contemporary music. One of the primary skills necessary in approaching contemporary music is the ability to experiment and think outside the box. This creativity will serve kids well not only in all of their music-making but in the rest of life. Of course, not all students will pursue a music career, but we need to prepare them in case they decide to take this path. Exposing them to contemporary music is essential for this; leaving it out is like never introducing them to unaccompanied Bach, a major category of music they should at least know about. Some of these students will become the musicians who will play new music as it is being written. Those who do not pursue a career in music will still be audience members at concerts—and we can help them learn to understand and appreciate new music.

There are significant hurdles to teaching contemporary music: it is unfamiliar to many of teachers and there are few resources for teaching it. It’s uncomfortable to teach what we don’t know, and often it takes more time to research than we have to spare with a busy teaching schedule. I hope that the resources in this article can make this more attainable. We don’t have to branch far outside the Suzuki repertoire to begin giving students the skills they will need for contemporary music. All we need is an openness to experiment a little, to try something new along with our students. We as teachers can keep learning as well, and this is part of what can make lessons fresh and exciting for both teacher and student!

There is also a stigma that contemporary music is quite difficult, and we want to be wise about giving our students a solid foundation of playing ability before supplementing. Some contemporary music only looks hard because it uses unfamiliar techniques or notation, but much of it is actually quite difficult. With the generous help of several other teachers, I have been compiling a graded list of contemporary supplemental repertoire, which is at the end of this article. It is not comprehensive, but the pieces here are relatively easy to find, fun to play, and accessible to students.

Introducing Contemporary Music to Students

From Pre-Twinkle through the end of Suzuki Violin Vol. 3, students are learning basic skills necessary for any music they will encounter. At this stage, the core repertoire keeps us busy and contains a great sequence for introducing techniques, without the need for supplementing other pieces. But even at this stage, we can expose students to all kinds of music through listening. You can compile a recommended listening list for your studio, which keeps growing as you hear of new pieces. It’s easy to create playlists and share them with your students as well. Group classes can listen to pieces together and discuss what you heard. Encourage your students to go to concerts! I have fond memories of my teacher Dr. Rebekah Hanson taking our group class to orchestra concerts; we would perform Suzuki pieces in the lobby before the concert, then hear the professional symphony perform afterwards. These were great studio bonding experiences, and I was exposed in this way to music I would not otherwise have heard.

In these early stages, we can also incorporate rhythm games into lessons and group classes that will prepare students for new music. Once students understand 3/4 and 4/4 meters, we shouldn’t stop there! Right away we can introduce uneven meters such as 5/4 and 7/4, and when they are ready, compound meters and syncopation. All of this can be done with fun games apart from the instrument that don’t interfere with the basic techniques we are trying to establish.

Once violin students reach Suzuki Book Four, it’s often appropriate to start supplementing the repertoire. They have the skills now to begin approaching other kinds of music. Also, it’s not uncommon for students to start feeling burnt out around this level. Often they are ready for something new and different. For these reasons, this is a good time to start introducing contemporary techniques and pieces.

Introducing New Techniques

I think of contemporary technique in two categories. First, there are the fancy techniques that are actually quite straightforward to learn. These are not usually taught unless we encounter them in a piece, and since they don’t appear much in the Suzuki repertoire, they can be accidentally overlooked. Whenever the student is ready, you can introduce them! They include: pizzicato/left hand pizzicato, fast changes between pizz and arco, Bartók (snap) pizzicato, col legno, sul tasto/sul ponticello, circular bowing, tremolo, con sordino, and many more.

These can be fun ways to spice up the Suzuki review pieces in group class. It’s quite easy to add sul ponticello to the echo in Go Tell Aunt Rhody, for instance. And there are endless ways to modify Perpetual Motion to include left-hand pizzicato, col legno, etc. Kids will love the new sounds they can produce, and when these techniques appear in repertoire, they will already be familiar. There are also great supplemental pieces that are not too difficult and include some of these techniques. One example is Persichetti’s Masques, which has ten very short character movements.

The second category of contemporary technique includes areas for ongoing development, which should be part of lessons and practice routinely so that the student continues to build his or her skills. These fit into three subcategories: rhythm skills, advanced intonation skills, and musicality.

Rhythm

Rhythm is one of the most important elements that needs continual development. It is easy to stop working on this actively after children can read music, or only work with it as it comes up in the repertoire. The problem is that the Suzuki repertoire mostly contains straightforward rhythms which are nothing like what students will encounter in new music. We need to help students become familiar with these elements of rhythm: uneven meters; switching between meters; cross-rhythms (3 against 2, 4 against 3, etc.); and subdivision into parts other than three and two.

Once again, we can repurpose review pieces to work on these. You can create complicated rhythms to play on Twinkle. Perpetual Motion is easily adaptable into 5/8 meter if you add one repeated note to every group of four. If you feel adventurous, you can even transform it into 7/8 by subtracting a note from every other group of four.

As mentioned before, there are many fun group class clapping games. You can practice cross-rhythms by dividing the class into two parts, having one group clap in duples and the other in triples. Once this is easy, try harder cross-rhythms. Steve Reich has even composed a piece called *Clapping Music *which could be a great advanced group class project.

When students have learned the usual scale accelerations, try introducing other subdivisions: slurring five and seven per bow, and mixing up the order of slur patterns. There are also many great supplemental works to practice rhythm, including Bartók’s 44 Duos and Eastern Europe fiddle tunes, for which there are easily accessible compilations.

Intonation

Students will encounter advanced intonation skills in contemporary music, which we can prepare them for as well. Here are some of them: extreme registers, large leaps, glissandi, harmonics (natural and artificial), double stops, non-traditional harmony, and microtones.

Pieces in Suzuki Book One can be easily adapted to practice hearing new harmonies. One of my favorite group class games is to play Twinkle in three different keys at once, listening to the surprising harmonies that result. Can you still play in tune when it’s hard to hear the pitch center? You can also transpose Go Tell Aunt Rhody or Allegro into other modes such as Phrygian or Dorian. Perpetual Motion can be modified to include large leaps of an octave or two; you can add a glissando to a harmonic on the repeated note; you can practice it in tenth position. Add double stops to review pieces, starting with open strings and gradually progressing to more difficult ones like thirds. Fiddle music is also a great way to work on double stops. In our scale routine, we can incorporate less standard modes, such as octatonic scales or other interval patterns. Once again, many supplemental works have great options for practicing these intonation challenges, including the Bartók duos and others on the accompanying list that feature a tonal student part against a more dissonant teacher’s line or piano accompaniment.

Musicality

Contemporary music will require students to have extra control over their sound quality and overall musicality. These challenges can include sudden dynamic and character changes, new timbres, an attitude of curiosity and experimentation, and improvisation. With review, it can be fun to choose characters, colors, or textures to portray. For instance, you can play Long, Long Ago with the tone of sandpaper or velvet, or the color burnt orange. Discuss with the class what this could mean and try things together. Practice sudden dynamic changes: have the leader of the group change without warning, and everyone else sees how quickly they can follow. When practicing tone, go beyond what “sounds good” for extreme character possibilities. Explore the full range of color possibilities, all the way from scratch tones to flautando. Incorporate supplemental repertoire that practices a wide variety of characters. Persichetti Masques works well for this, or for more advanced students, Penderecki’s Tanz.

This is by no means an exhaustive exploration of the techniques involved in contemporary music or the ways of introducing this music to students. It is meant to be a starting point, and to show that it is not just possible, but essential, to teach students how to play contemporary music. We can begin giving young children the skills that will make this music approachable. I hope this inspires you to explore new music in perhaps a new way and to share it with others.

Special thanks to the teachers who helped me with this research project by generously sharing their time and resources, including Wendy Seravalle-Smith, Charles Krigbaum, and Carrie Reuning-Hummel.

Comfort Smith is a violinist and teacher from Newberg, Oregon. Comfort holds an M.M. in Suzuki Pedagogy and String Performance at Ithaca College, and a B.A. in Music Performance and English from George Fox University. In addition to teaching, she plays with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and other local groups, and also enjoys composing and arranging. Comfort loves teaching, and she believes every child can learn to play an instrument. For more information, view the studio website: ivystringsacademy.com.