Conclusions on the effectiveness in Apollo’s Banquet

Playford’s Apollo’s Banquet gives more possibilities to teach the basic elements of the baroque musical language. From someone who is not a violinist Playford manages to present songs, that are on the whole idiomatic for violin. The twenty songs chosen were amongst those songs that showed idiomatic features for the violin and those simple to play.

As was stated at the start of this paper, more baroque repertoire need to be found for beginner violinist without making arrangements of sonatas, concertos or orchestral works. These songs can go together with the baroque repertoire currently used in the modern method books and allow young violinists to experience many examples of similar baroque elements as possible. This paper presents just one idea of where material can be found and how it can be used. The suggestion is to adapt the repertoire to the pupil. This is not currently a stand-alone method but it could be with further investigation into other collections for amateur violinist of the seventeenth century.

Result from teaching

Baroque elements taught

The songs were generally well-received and many of the preplanned ideas that can be seen from the song analysis worked in the lessons. I was able to effectively give songs to match student abilities using knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses. The students enjoyed the songs and the activities kept them stimulated in the lesson. By adding lyrics it allowed for a successful creation of varied activities to serve a musical or technical purpose. The following table gives a summary of the elements that were successfully tackled and in which songs they occurred.

Further discussion

With twenty songs from Playfords’ Apollo’s Banquet (1660; 1682), this paper has shown that by using these songs new ways of baroque teaching can be explored. It gives multiple ways in which musical ideas can be subconsciously taught and at what stage the ideas can be made conscious. Teachers aim to give their students broad musical experiences and thus not all the elements taught from these songs are solely baroque but for general musicianship.

Further study should be undertaken on the remaining songs in other editions of Apollos Banquet and using songs from Division Violin (1685) would also be recommended. Together with this, other elements of baroque music such as rhetoric and improvisation could also be investigated.

Apollo’s Banquet for treble violin presents beautiful repertoire from the 17th century and children should be able to sing this high quality music. The material allows for the opportunity to come away from the method books of the 20th and 21st century. In order to train ideas of baroque language, many examples are needed and therefore it is important for further generations of baroque music teachers to search for more material.

To be a good teacher, I believe that teachers should continue learning themselves. Method books that are currently available include beautiful pieces that should be used but this shouldn’t be the limit of our repertoire. Having begun this research looking at all the different kinds of folk music, I am pleased to have found a source of beautiful old melodies suitable for adapting for the beginner violin student. I believe that if teachers were to explore more folk music repertoire of the seventeenth century, it would provide our students with a richer experience of the baroque style.

Aspects that needed improving

Time: One drawback of this study was the time constraints of the research. Two lessons were not enough to map a development in the students. However I tried to address the issue by including students at different levels so that I could see how more experienced violinists would tackle the ideas. Many encouraging signs could be seen with baroque elements being integrated into their playing.

Length of songs: It was a common problem that songs which were more than 8 bars felt too long. This was possibly also due to time constraints or with the method of teaching. First year students are often used to songs with one or two sentences. Most students were only able to spend one or two lessons on a song as they also have their mainstream repertoire so often only the first half of a song was taught.

Consistent steps: The third aspect that needed improving concerned just one song but presented a broader problem. It was a musical idea that was not prepared and therefore did not work effectively. In the song Dot to Dot I wanted to show open and closed phrases. The plan was to use this as a starting activity and then we would work on improvising on the two different phrases. I wrongly assumed the students would intuitively hear when a phrase would end open or closed. I then had to explain that one melody went up like a question and the other down like an answer but still it was not really understood. The issue was they had not experienced this internally and I was trying to make them understand something in theory rather than practice. To solve the issue I made an activity where questions and answers were sung, in amongst a ‘detective’ game. After playing the game we made movements for questions and answers and they had to guess which I was playing. This can be seen in the following video, and it is clear that the phrases are still recognised when played with added embellishments.I learnt that every step needs to be anaysised and even with the third year students, steps should not be missed, just shold just take less time.

Range: There were also a few issues with the songs that beyond the range of an octave from D to D it was not comfortable for many of the students. Something I need to improve in my teaching is being sure what note a song begins on and being aware if songs need to be transposed.

Language: Another issue was that no students had English as their mother tongue and so lyrics were sometimes too difficult for children.  As seen in the analysis many of the songs were written in Dutch to avoid this but this should be have been done with every song. The following example shows a typical translation.

Ex.5: Saraband Eight, No 186, Apollo’s Banquet 1670

Ex.6: In English: Hiding Saraband

Ex.6: In Dutch Waar ben je Saraband?

Ability level of song: From looking at the songs in the Playford’s collection, it can be seen that the songs have not been put into any order of ability. Therefore the material has to be analysed well before setting them to varying ability levels. Playford was unfortunately not a violinist and although for the most part his songs stay in first position, the hand shapes needed to play them are often more advanced than what is possible for the beginner violinist.