Rebecca over at Piano Teachers Retreat recently posted that Elijah Brossenbroek is offering a copy of his piece A Song of Simplicity if we go to his web site and send him an email requesting it. Rebecca always has interesting things on her blog, which is why she is a link on my blog roll. I don’t know how she keeps up with everything!
I always love to hear piano music by new composers so I went to Elijah’s site. You can read about him and listen to his piano music here. He sent me a copy of his piece almost immediately and gave his permission to blog about it. It’s a lovely 5 page piece at about the late intermediate level with quick broken chords, lots of pedal, rubato, and needs attention to dynamic expression. The boys and young men in your studio will be interested to learn Elijah spent 5 years in the Marine Corp. I can guarantee that your teen students will love working on it this summer! Be sure to show them his web site and let them listen to some of his other music they can download to their m3 players. You can also show them several YouTube sites to watch and listen to it.
Point out the hidden melody in the broken chords. Let them follow the music on the web and notice how the dynamic changes really make this piece. You can also sneak in some theory as you work out some of the chord inversions, but I wouldn’t do much of that, just enough to show the reason we learn theory! If you have potential young composers, this might encourage them to sit down at the piano and try their hand at it. If you would like to download A Song of Simplicity, go to his web site and email him.
My father was in the Marine Corp in WW 2 and was injured on Iwo Jima, the island with the famous picture of the Marines raising the flag. He loved music and was always very encouraging of my musical efforts. He would be thrilled to listen to Elijah’s music if he was here. With Father’s Day just around the corner, I thought I’d mention that.
