By |

The release of a new piano syllabus is always met with excitement and interest from piano teachers, and students too, and the latest release from Trinity College London (TCL) will not disappoint.

I have been a fan of TCL’s piano exam syllabus and approach to music exams for a long time. When I was teaching, my students enjoyed the range of repertoire on offer which seemed to suit all tastes and ages, across the grades, and the emphasis on performance rather than technical exercises. From a teaching point of view, I always valued the exercises included as part of each grade’s syllabus, which assist students in understanding and honing techniques which directly relevant to the pieces they were studying.

The new release of Piano Pieces Plus Exercises from TCL encompasses a wider range of styles and genres at every grade than ever before, offering an engaging, imaginative and highly varied selection to satisfy the tastes of any pianist, be they children, teenagers or adult learners. The grade volumes are immediately appealing: the attractive cover has a striking illustration of a grand piano, while inside there is heavyweight cream paper and clear, unfussy engraving. Each volume, colour-coded according to grade (as per previous syllabuses) and available in print and e-book format, includes comprehensive Performance Notes which offer important context to each piece and aspects to consider in learning, interpretating and performing the music. The major addition for 2023 is the ‘Extended Edition’ for each grade, offering a handsome volume of 21 appealing pieces from Baroque to present-day, plus exercises and scales and arpeggios. These are available in addition to the standard exam repertoire books of 12 pieces. The Extended edition also includes access to broadcast quality downloadable demo tracks (via a download code) so that teachers and students may listen to each piece and the exercises, performed by a cohort of well-respected pianists, including Yulina Chaplina, Greg Drott and John Paul Ekins.

In addition to the books, TCL has produced accompanying resources – Theory of Music Workbooks, Introducing Theory and Specimen Aural Tests from 2017 to support teachers and students. Detailed information about these e-books can be accessed via QR codes at the back of the repertoire books.

And what of the repertoire itself? Teachers really appreciate the importance of finding pieces that will encourage students to practice, and – more importantly – enjoy their practising, and also foster a love of music. Variety is key here, I think, and a good selection of repertoire will enable teachers to find the right music to suit each individual student. If students are engaged by the music they are learning, practicing can be enjoyable and stimulating. It is particularly important to provide teenage students with repertoire which they feel is relevant to them and their interests (e.g. pop or video game music). Some of course will want to play pieces by composers from the “core canon”; while others will make more leftfield choices.

And that’s fine, because ultimately we want students to enjoy their piano playing – and it doesn’t matter if they’re playing Bach or Bieber (Justin!), so long as they find pleasure and stimulation in the music.

If the 2021 piano syllabus widened the repertoire boundaries, the 2023 syllabus has extended them even further to include a highly appealing and imaginative range of well-known/popular pieces from:

  • classical composers ranging from Scarlatti, J. S. Bach, Haydn, Schubert and Chopin to Margaret Murray McLeod, Roxana Panufnik and Ludovico Einaudi
  • jazz and Latin artists such as Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and Chick Corea
  • pop artists such as Ed Sheeran, Bono, Adele, Coldplay, BTS, and Pharrell Williams
  • films and TV shows such as Harry Potter, Star Wars, La La Land, Doctor Who, and Pokémon, classic Bollywood films such as Woh Kaun Thi? and Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai, and Studio Ghibli films such as Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke
  • video games such as The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Super Mario Bros

In addition, as in 2021, TCL has commissioned brand new repertoire for every grade from some of the most exciting international contemporary composers, drawing on diverse musical influences from around the world.

The significant inclusion of music by female composers, including Helene de Montgeroult, Dora Pejačević and Florence Price, and those from historically underrepresented backgrounds ensures as diverse a range of repertoire as possible.

Drawing on the success and appeal of their ground-breaking 2021 syllabus, TCL will no longer be retiring repertoire and these volumes will be available indefinitely, offering a rich and ever-expanding repertoire collection, which will, hopefully encourage students to continue performing the music they love for as long as they like. Trinity’s 2021 Piano books will also remain valid for use in exams indefinitely and can be used alongside the new 2023 books, resulting in the largest selection of repertoire yet with 42 pieces across the 2021 and 2023 publications for candidates to choose from.

Appreciative of the wishes of students, and teachers, TCL offers a flexible syllabus, allowing candidates to take their exams in-person or digitally. They may select three pieces from across the syllabus, allowing them to play the music they want to play and demonstrate their own musical identity. There is also the option to play their own composition. To support students and teachers, TCL offers a range of free online resources, produced with professional musicians and educators, to help students develop their performance skills and musical knowledge.

In conclusion, TCL has produced perhaps the most impressive, comprehensive, wide-ranging and appealing piano syllabus yet and one which I am sure both teachers and students will enjoy exploring and playing.

The new piano syllabus is available from 4 September 2023.

For full details of exam entry requirements, and more, please visit TCL’s website: https://www.trinitycollege.com/qualifications/music/grade-exams/piano

Support The Cross-Eyed Pianist

This site is free to access and ad-free, and takes many hours to research, write, and maintain. If you find joy and value in what I do, why not

BUY ME A COFFEE

By |

That’s the view of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, the major UK (and worldwide) music examinations board. It’s a view I don’t happen to agree with and this emphasis on “assessment” and testing rather than encouraging musicianship, musicality and, above all, enjoyment in making music, is one of the reasons why I stopped using the ABRSM exam syllabus only a few years after I started teaching piano privately in 2006. For me, this tweet is a sign of just how out of touch the ABRSM, an organisation which apparently prides itself on being the “gold standard” for music education, has become.

Unfortunately a lot of people – parents and teachers – think assessment and “getting your grades” is what learning music is about. You can read my thoughts on this subject here.

By |

An earlier version of this article appeared on my sister blog http://www.franspianostudio.me

She can certainly play the 2015-16 [Grade 8] syllabus pieces A-C brilliantly……Can she play anything else? I’ll get back to you on that.

This is a quote from an article about graded music exams by journalist Rosie Millard, who, by her own admission, is “a pushy music parent” when it comes to her children’s music exams. In common with a number of my piano teaching friends and colleagues, this article made me angry and frustrated, primarily because Ms Millard seems to completely miss the point about taking music lessons and playing music.

1f557-abrsmexamMany students take graded music exams each year, and many students take pride and pleasure from the visible results of their dedication to the practising and study of their chosen instrument. Ms Millard notes this satisfaction in her article and reveals a degree of parental pride (and rightly so) in her children’s music exam successes. Unfortunately, some parents use these successes as “bragging rights” to be paraded before other parents and children in the school playground or used as bargaining tools when applying to a particular school.

Do these exam achievements make Ms Millard’s children “musicians”? I’m not so sure….. Admittedly, at no point in the article does Ms Millard mention musicianship or musicality: her focus is simply on her children’s accumulation of grades. I do applaud her, however, for submitting herself to Grade 5 piano, “to see just how terrifying taking a grade really was”, but she does not mention if she derived any actual pleasure or satisfaction in learning the repertoire or any of the musical or personal developmental benefits of taking a music exam. But at least she has a degree of insight into what she is putting her children through in insisting they take all their grade exams.

The memory of taking music exams can stay with us into adulthood, as the author of this article notes. I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve met who, on discovering I am a piano teacher, tell me “I wish I’d continued with the piano, but I really hated taking those exams!”. One of the reasons why I decided to take two performance diplomas in my late 40s was to erase the memory of my ABRSM Grade 8 piano exam, taken some 30 years earlier (yes, it really was that awful, despite the fact that I played well and achieved a decent pass). A different exam board (Trinity College London) and a different attitude to assessment (Trinity places emphasis musicality and musicianship) meant the diploma recitals were a pleasure instead of an uncomfortable, nerve-wracking chore, and I switched my students from Associated Board (ABRSM) exams to Trinity to ensure their exam experience was similarly enjoyable.

Graded music exams have their uses: the choice of repertoire in the syllabus offers students a chance to study a broad sweep of music from the Baroque to present-day; learning scales teaches students about keys and key-relationships, and provides important technical foundations which can be applied to pieces (something which wasn’t pointed out to me by my childhood piano teacher, so that scales were simply dull exercises to be got through as soon as possible in my practising); and the grade system provides a useful benchmark of a student’s attainment and progress. Preparing for and taking a music exam can inform children about the need for and benefits of regular, meaningful practising, and performing can breed confidence and self-esteem (but only if the student is well-prepared with support from a teacher who can advise on aspects such as stagecraft, presentation and managing anxiety). But an exam is only a snapshot of that student on a particular day – and may not indicate the student’s true abilities, especially if the student is nervous or under-prepared. Yes, it’s true that music exam successes look good on a CV as proof of extra-curricular activities, but any savvy interviewer is going to want to see evidence of broader music making, especially if the student is applying to conservatoire.

Box-ticking music-exams are utterly unhelpful, both to development of musicians and to those subjects that are lured into UCAS points-collecting.

Look at it this way: how many music teachers here would regard an A-level in biology as being indicative of a good future as a concert pianist?

A quote from a member of a music teachers’ online forum

Teachers love grades, because they reveal their prowess as a teacher.

Rosie Millard

No. What reveals one’s “prowess” as a teacher is the ability to motivate, encourage and guide young people (and adults too) to become well-rounded musicians, not exam automatons who reproduce by rote what they have been spoonfed simply to secure an exam pass. A good teacher should know the ability levels of all his/her students without the need for testing. And a good teacher does not live by his/her exam results, by how many students achieve a merit or a distinction, but rather by knowing each of his/her students’ strengths and weaknesses, what music makes them tick, and their individual personalities.

My students have the option to take grade exams if they wish. No one is forced to take an exam and some students simply wish to play music which they enjoy and which enables them to develop as musicians without the pressure of exams. Sometimes they opt to have their playing assessed by a teaching colleague of mine, to gain experience of playing for other people and useful feedback from another listener. Other students enjoy the challenge of studying for an exam, but this is always done within a broader focus (learning additional related repertoire, listening around the pieces, historical contexts etc).

I do not believe that taking graded music exams proves you are a “musician”. Being a well-rounded musician goes far beyond the ability to play three pieces, some scales and technical exercises, sight-read an unseen study and complete an aural test. Being a musician is about understanding the music, its structure and its meaning, intellectually, visually and aurally. It is about learning a wide variety of music, outside of the strict confines of the exam syllabus, to gain a broad understanding and appreciation of music and its different genres. It’s about listening, going to concerts, reading literature and poetry, going to the cinema or an art exhibition, to appreciate that composers do not create music in a vacuum, but that their creativity is informed by their personal experiences and observations of the world around them. It’s about the pleasure of a certain phrase or the feel of a particular chord under the fingers. It’s about making music with others, playing in concerts for parents, friends and family, and sharing the experience of music. In short, it is about enjoyment.

Our children are tested almost from the moment they enter school in the UK. Let’s not over-burden them with further testing in an activity which is meant to be enjoyable. By all means take a music exam, but don’t let it obscure the pleasure of music.

Further reading

Why take a music exam?

The curse of the pushy parent

The virtuoso parent

 

 

 

 

By |

The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) has launched a new performance diploma, the ARSM, designed as “a bridge between Grade 8 and the DipABRSM”. The new Diploma, ARSM (Associate of the Royal Schools of Music), is different to both Grade 8 and the DipABRSM in that it includes no supporting tests (technical work, sight-reading/quick study, viva (for DipABRSM) or programme notes). The repertoire list is taken from the DipABRSM syllabus, though much reduced, and candidates may include 10 minutes of own-choice repertoire of Grade 8 or above standard to create a recital programme lasting 30 minute in total. To all intents and purposes this “diploma” looks very much like a reinvented version of the Advanced Certificate or Trinity’s Advanced Performance Certificate.

Concerns about the new ARSM have been expressed by piano teachers via Piano Network UK, a large and very active Facebook group comprising piano teachers, pianists (professional and amateur) and piano lovers, of which I am co-administrator. I would like to share some of these views here. My colleague and friend Andrew Eales, who writes the excellent Piano Dao blog, will be publishing a more considered response to the ARSM, together with an interview with Penny Millsom of the ABRSM in which he hopes to clarify some of the issues raised below. 

Please note that any views expressed here are independent and my publishing them does not necessarily mean Andrew and I support or endorse them. They are drawn from a diverse range of British piano teachers of differing ages and experience. My own comments and views about the ARSM diploma are in italics.

Level of attainment, marking and assessment criteria

  • I find the fact that Distinction is set at 45/50 interesting (in comparison to 70/100 for the dip/Licentiate levels) – though I have yet to decide what this actually means, if anything, about the marking, relative standards required, contributions of the viva and quick study…
  • In my view, it is simply Grade 9. Something on easy terms just to get letters after people’s names. 
  • Any old examiner, presumably no requirement for them to be a specialist in your instrument. So the exercise itself is kind of worthless, and the marking will be pretty irrelevant. But here, have a qualification…

Is it really a “Diploma”?

  • It’s essentially a composite of other products/services that ABRSM already offer – an examiner who is already there to examine Grade 1 players, a repertoire list that already exists… from a business point of view it seems like a great idea because ABRSM don’t seem to have needed to do much at all to add this to their overall offer, but the market could be quite large.
  • I don’t understand why it is marketed at associate level
  • Doesn’t this just devalue the DipABRSM in performance? By all means have the equivalent of the Trinity Advanced Certificate but don’t call it a diploma when it so clearly isn’t!
  • Same repertoire as the DipABRSM. So like a diploma, minus the bits people complain about. So, not particularly educational. 
  • I just don’t think it is sufficiently rigorous to be called a Diploma
  • It claims “associate” status, but simply isn’t on that level. So it devalues genuine associate diplomas as a whole, and is misleading to potential students/parents.
  • By calling it a “diploma” ABRSM have blurred the boundaries between the graded amateur exams and the higher professional diplomas. And very few people, if any, outside the profession (parents of students for example) will appreciate the difference. My concern is that it may devalue the higher diplomas and lead to further dumbing down across all exams. I’m afraid I feel it is primarily driven by commercial interests on the part of ABRSM. 
  • One of the main purposes of a professional qualification – and especially having letters after one’s name – is so that prospective clients are reassured that we are properly qualified. 
  • Hard to believe that this will confer diploma status, and entitle the holders to put letters after their name. To the general public, there will be little difference between an ARSM and a FRSM, or anything in between
  • This is really just a money-spinner. I cannot understand the logic in it being marked out of 50, or am I missing something?! It doesn’t appear to be accredited at a particular level, and I agree with others that it shouldn’t really confer diploma status. 

Who it is for?

I can see this new Diploma suiting some of my more talented teenage students who would like to improve their performing skills and/or want a different challenge post-Grade 8. A number of adult amateur pianists whom I know have also commented that they would like to take this diploma because the format encourages one to “enjoy playing”. 

A couple of teachers who are keen to improve their performance skills have expressed an interest in taking the ARSM as a form of continuing professional development:

  • …to me it is simply about skill refreshing. I do appreciate others’ concerns but perhaps for piano teachers who haven’t done any serious practice in a while it could be a good thing?

If you have views on the new ARSM diploma please feel free to leave comments below or use the contact page to get in touch.