Apollo’s Banquet for children: Teaching baroque music to the young violinist

Ryuko Reid

Name: Ryuko Reid Main Subject: Baroque Violin Research Supervisor: Johannes Boer Title of Research: Apollo’s Banquet for Children: Teaching baroque music to the young violinist Research Question: How can the baroque “rules” being used today in the field of historically informed performance practice be taught at a young age? Summary of Results: The purpose of this study is to investigate what aspects of the musical language of the baroque era can be experienced from twenty songs found in John Playford’s Apollo’s Banquet. This is a collection of country-dances, broad street ballads, theatre tunes, tunes from Morris dancing, Scottish tunes and French dances, that were published for the amateur violinist in 1670. In this study, these songs were taught to students between the ages of 5 and 10 with activities designed to create awareness of gestures, bar hierarchy, light cadences and other important baroque features, in a fun and approachable way. Videos and observations of the lessons show that the repertoire was well received and the paper shows that the use of the songs provided an effective initial stage in experiencing baroque music However the students would need to be exposed to many more examples of these baroque elements before they become consciously learned. This paper also concludes that other elements of baroque music not included in this study, such as rhetorical devices and improvisation could be investigated, and exploring folk music repertoire of the seventeenth century would provide our students with a richer experience of the baroque style. Biography: Ryuko Reid is a baroque violinist specialising in historically informed performance practice and is the artist director and leader of Amsterdam Corelli Collective. Ryuko works as a violin teacher in Muziekschool Amstelveen and studied the Kodály method at Koninklijk Conservatorium. She came to study baroque violin with Sophie Gent at Conservatorium van Amsterdam and is currently finishing her masters at Koninklijk Conservatorium, with Kati Debretzeni and Walter Reiter. Before moving to Amsterdam, she studied modern violin with Jan Repko, taught at Chetham’s School of Music and studied Dalcroze method in Manchester, UK.

Bibliography

Boquet, Pasale; Rebours, Gerard, 50 Renassance& Baroque Standards, Ed. Fuzeau classique, 2007

Carter, Tim & Butt, John, The Cambridge history of seventeenth-century music, Cambridge University Press, 2005

Cressy David, England on Edge: Crisis and Revolution 1640-1642, Oxford Univeristy Press, 2006

Curti, Martha Margaret, Apollo’s Banquet, 1977

DeVries, Peter, “Reevaluating Common Kodály Practices”, Music Educators Journal, Vol. 88, No. 3, 2001

Engel, Carl, An Introduction to the Study of National Music; comprising researches into popular songs, traditions, and customs. London, 1866

Farber, Anne; Parker, Lisa; “Discovering Music through Dalcroze Eurhythimics”, Music Educators Journal, Vol. 74, No 3, 1987

Frank, Kidson; Neal, Mary, English Folk-song and Dance, Cambridge, 1915

Geoghegan, Lucinda & Nemes, Laszlo Nobert, Singing Games and Rhymes; for ages 9 to 99, National Youth Choir of Scotland, 2014

Gomme, Alice Bertha, A dictionary of British Folk-lore, London 1894-1898

Herissone, Rebeccam; Playford, Purcell and the Functions of Music Publishing in Restoration England. Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol 63. No 2, 2010

Holman, Peter, Four and Twenty Fiddlers: The Violin at the English Court 1540-1690, Oxford, 1993

Jaques-Dalcroze, Emile. Rhythm Music & Education. London: Dalcroze society Inc., 1967

Keller, Kate Van Winkle & Shimer, Genevieve, The Playford Ball; 103 Early English Country Dances 1651-1820, 1994

Kidson, Frank & Neal Mary, English Folk-Song and Dance, 1915

Mackerness, Eric David, A Social History of English Music, London 1964

Mackerness, Eric David, A Social History of English Music, Routledge, New York, 1964

Nelson, Sheila; The Violin and Viola: History, Structure, Techniques, 1972

Playford, John, Apollo’s Banquet, 1670

Playford, John, Apollo’s Banquet, 1687

Simpson, Claude, The British Broadside Ballad and its Music, Rutgers University Press, 1966

Spitzer, John; Zaslaw, Neal: The Birth of the Orchestra: History of an Institution, 1650-1815, Oxford University Press and New York, 2004

Wisdom, Sarah Page, Ballads Culture and Performance in England 1640-1660, (Thesis) Georgia State University, 2011

Tip

Tip

Bibliography