Imitation and Inversion

Kalil is working on selections from Bartok's Mikrokosmos, Volume 1. Kalil, as well as many of my other students, are often fascinated by the analysis required to understand much of what is happening in these works.

Mikrokosmos is a collection of 153 piano pieces arranged in order of increasing musical and technical difficulty.  Generations of pianists have studied these pieces to develop not only technique, but also their musical knowledge of sounds and compositional technique not typically found in beginning piano methods.  Folk modality, pitch combination symmetry and atonality are found in many of these works, as well as irregular meter and other unique rhythmic aspects.  Mikrokosmos is an underutilized teaching method in the contemporary piano studio that contains a wealth of very accessible musical materials that provide so much more than many modern methods.  

In these videos, watch Kalil and I discuss the concept of musical imitation and briefly improvise using this concept.  Also, watch Kalil perform "Imitation and Inversion" (#23) on September 25th.  Stay tuned for a video of his performance of the same piece just a few days later in my undergraduate Piano Pedagogy course.