How to Select Violin Repertoire – As Excerpted from Leopold Auer

From Leopold Auer’s Violin Playing as I Teach It

Advice on Violin Repertoire – Through the Lens of Leopold Auer

In Chapter IX of Leopold Auer’s Violin Playing as I Teach It, Auer writes about the matter of the selection of violin repertoire.

Select Repertoire in Developmental Terms

Here, Auer recommends that one’s repertoire should be selected in light of developmental considerations, with the works of highest difficulty set at the very end, and as ‘a last group of compositions represent[ing] the very maximum technical difficulty’ (17), and works of easier difficulty set at the very beginning.

Works of violin repertoire, as a consequence, should be selected in terms of development – and in terms of growing complexity.

Lyrical Works Pose Challenges

Perhaps unusually, Auer considers lyrical pieces or ‘cantabile numbers’ as also constituting technical challenges of a kind. 

Select According to the Individual, and in Combination

All-in-all, Auer recommends that it is ‘the individual factor’ that makes for ‘the determining one’ in selecting violin repertoire.

It is in light of all the above, as well as the combination of ‘intuition, instinct, physical equipment’, and even one’s ‘intellectual bias’ that helps one to successful select music.

FURTHER READING

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