Virtuoso violin soloist Rachel Barton Pine is championing a classical repertoire that you may not have heard before–and she has created a new pedagogical text to introduce it to you and your students.
This week I had the pleasure of hearing Pine speak about The String Student’s Library of Music by Black Composers, a pedagogical collection of incredible repertoire written between 1700 and the present day, in countries all over the world, by composers who “happen to be black.” This repertoire has largely been out-of-print, unavailable, or under-recognized by the classical music world. Rachel Barton Pine aims to change all that.
After recording her first record of solo violin works written by composers of African descent, Pine was confronted with more public interest than she expected. Musicians, educators, and parents of young string players wanted to find out about this underexposed repertoire, and looked to Pine for resources. Pine, who is of Caucasian descent and grew up in Chicago, said her first response to these questions was “Why are you asking me?” But as more and more requests rolled in, Pine teamed up with Dr. Dominique-Rene de Lerma, the world’s foremost authority on black classical composers, to collect and catalog these lesser-known works.
The String Student’s Library of Music by Black Composers is the first collection of its kind, and it is certain to be an outstanding resource for any string teacher. The collection will include graded student repertoire for violin, viola, cello, and string ensemble, companion CD’s, biographies of each composer, and interviews with living composers. The text also contains profiles of notable black musicians like George Bridgetower, for whom Beethoven wrote his Kreutzer Sonata, and quality articles on a variety of music topics, from classical music scenes in the African diaspora to violin playing in hip-hop and R&B music.
Pine’s mission is to make this repertoire available to a wider audience of musicians, young students, and music educators, in hopes that a truer picture of the diversity of the classical music world can be seen. Talented young black musicians, who may have trouble finding their own place in the world of classical music, will be able to see their own heritage in this volume, said Pine. In a recent lecture at the Icicle Creek African Music and Dance Festival in Leavenworth, Washington, Pine related her own experience as a young female violin student, navigating her own identity in classical music by connecting with the music of women composers. She hopes to offer a similar experience to students of African descent today. “We’re not only representing the past,” she said. “We’re inspiring the future.”
Pine stresses that the music in her collection deserves to be incorporated into the canon of art music and string student repertoire simply because it is excellent music. “It’s not meant to replace the classical music repertoire,” said Pine. “The idea is to have this be a supplemental curriculum,” included alongside other great works. The music itself, said Pine, “comes in every possible stripe.”
You can find out more about Pine’s collection, hear samples of the pieces, and find other pedagogical resources on the Rachel Elizabeth Barton Foundation website. The foundation also offers grant and instrument loan programs for talented young musicians.
