Customer Reviews

Standard Vocal Literature - An Introduction to Repertoire: Soprano (Vocal Library)

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3 star:		(1)
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You will find a healthy year's worth of instruction in this book. A great blend of styles and languages.

One of my favorite points is that this book comes with two CDs. The CDs include pronounciation aids for everything not in English, and piano accompaniament for all of the songs. I would, of course, have recommended that the money and effort be put out to hire a tallented soprano to demonstrate all of the pieces, but that's a minor gripe.

The selection of songs was artfully chosen, with a wide range of challenging and beautiful pieces included. Although not one of my favorites, "I Attempt From Love's Sickness" is a great repertoire song, and is a great tool to develop flexibility and fluidity of movement in the voice. In contrast, Love's Philosophy is a huge "little" song, barely a minute in duration depending on how it's performed, but climaxing to a huge, full-voiced peak at the end. It's a perfect encore piece, and a great addition to any recital.

In the French songs, the selection is limited to the typical French-style art songs. Since there is less variety in the really good French songs available, the editor has chosen some of the more beautiful and standard pieces. Si mes vers avaient des ailes is a beautiful, light love song, where Plaisir carries a bit heavier feel to the melody.

Both of the Schubert pieces are outstanding German repertoire pieces, and Du bist die Ruh is one of the more challenging pieces in the book if performed correctly.

In the theme of lyrical-type music, the editor includes Del cabello mas sutil as a Spanish piece, O mio babbino caro for Italian opera, and Pie Jesu for Latin oratorio. All three of these pieces showcase nearly any developing soprano voice, and provide a reasonable challenge to any young or begining singer.

As a fun change, The Sun, Whose Rays Are All Ablaze, provides a change to the rest of the pieces, boardering on an introduction to coloratura styling. It moves much more quickly and demands a lightness in the voice that is not required for "Babbino", "Cabello" or "Love's Philosophy".

I have selected a few of the most widely known and sung pieces to highlight, but the teacher and student alike would be encouraged to explore each of the pieces in this collection, as each provides a wealth of learning and development opportunities.

This book is a great resource for a student, singer or a voice teacher looking to start their students on some basic repertoire. One of my students has this book and I ordered it because I liked what song selections were inside.

The book came clean and looking brand new. I forget if there was still that plastic wrapping on it when it came but either way, I was very pleased. It also came with a CD. I don't know how well the CD works because I never needed to use it but it didn't look scratched.

The editions are acceptable, and the choice of repertoire is quite good. The product is described as containing an accompaniment cd, and indeed it does, except that the accompaniments are all played on the piano. There would be nothing wrong with this if there were some indication of this fact in the product description, but there was no such indication. Therefore, I expected the accompaniments to be from the composers' scores. I hoped for too much, and was disappointed.