Child Composers in the Old Conservatories

How Orphans Became Elite Musicians

Bibliographic Data

ID8121500
AuthorsRobert O Gjerdingen (Professor of Music, Northwestern University, corresponding author)
Year2020
Pages368
Publication date2020-03-26
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueChild Composers in the Old Conservatories (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University PressNew York (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/oso/9780190653590.001.0001
OpenAlexW3204819279
ISBN9780190653590
Open LibraryOL29482467M
Google BooksMcXLDwAAQBAJ
LanguageEN
Citations received10

The original music conservatories were orphanages. Through innovative teaching methods the masters of these old institutions were able to transform poor and often illiterate castoffs into elite musicians, many of whom became famous in the history of classical music. The book tells the story of how this was done. It shows what the lessons were like, what a typical day was like for an orphan, and how children progressed from simple lessons to ones more advanced than any seen today in colleges and universities. Recent rediscoveries of thousands of the old lessons have allowed us to understand how children’s minds were systematically developed to be able to “think” in music. That is, the lessons slowly built up the mental ability to imagine the interplay of two or more voices or instruments. Today we think of Mozart as having a miraculous ability to imagine musical works in his head, but in truth many of the conservatory graduates of that era had attained a similar level of controlled musical imagination. They could improvise for hours at the keyboard, and they could quickly compose whole works for ensembles. The book is accompanied by 100 YouTube videos so that readers can hear what the lessons sounded like

Aesthetics · Art · Elite · Epistemology · Literature · MOZART · Musical · Political science · Politics · Simple (philosophy · Visual arts · Diverse Musicological Studies · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Psychology · Child composers · Composition (music) · Composition (Musique) · Conservatories of music · Enfants compositeurs · Étude et enseignement · History · Instruction and study · Music, instruction and study · Law · Philosophy

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