Progressive Duets - Volume I

Description

Viola 1, Viola 2 — have discovered the tremendous benefits of encouraging students toplay in chamber-music groups. The simplest form of chamber musicis the duet. Duets provide students with the opportunity to studymusic that can be played with other students or with their teacher.While developing the ensemble skills required for duet performance,students can also be working on technique, intonation, and tonequality. In addition, duets are an excellent form of music for practicingsight-reading skills.Classical composers wrote a tremendous volume of chamber musicthat was probably used for evening gatherings of friends and musicians.String literature and study material are rich in duets written by thegreat composers and master teachers of the last 200 years. In recentyears, teachers and arrangers have compiled collections of these duetsin an effort to make a varied selection of music available to students.This new collection of duets for strings brings together some newarrangements from the classical repertoire along with established duets,as well as some new compositions that will provide hours of musicalenjoyment. It is published for violin, viola, cello and string bass andis arranged so that it can be performed by any two of these stringinstruments. The duets are placed in the book in order of difficultyand cover a range of keys. Special care was taken to make sure thatboth of the duet parts are on a similar ability level and that each lineis given an opportunity to play a lead role at some point during thearrangement. Also, all musical markings are attached to both systems,and the point size of the music was considered for ease of reading.It was a pleasure for us to have the opportunity to put togetherthis collection. We hope it will help to stimulate and enhance themusicianship of the performers, and will provide pleasure as you useit in the years to come. The Carl Fischer Progressive Duets for Strings series is a comprehensive publication of two volumes of graded duets that have been arranged or composed by Larry Clark and Doris Gazda. This collection of duets will be useful in a variety of performance situations and is an excellent way for the student to build ensemble skills with a colleague or teacher. These pieces are published for viola, violin, cello, and bass and are arranged so that it can be performed by any combination of these string instruments, making this collection a valuable tool in the school classroom and with ensemble sessions.