We Are the Music Makers: Volume II String Trios: A Graded Guide to Chamber Music

Teachers have for years recognized the benefits and rewards of teaching or encouraging their students to participate in playing chamber music in studio, school, orchestral or summer music programs. Chamber music allows students to develop communication skills and musical sensitivity not otherwise channeled in other forms of music making. Chamber music is in essence the great meeting place between the soloist and ensemble player and those musical and personal qualities developed in chamber music reward the player with a grander sense of purpose and an understanding of their role in the music making process. This second volume analyzes 212 works from the String Trio canon utilizing the Placilla-Law system of chamber music grading developed in the first volume of this multi-volume series of We Are the Music Makers. This grading system and research has been presented at the National American String Teachers Association National Conference and at state conferences in South Carolina and North Carolina. Christina Placilla, Associate Professor of Music at Winston-Salem State University and violist and her undergraduate research assistant Alexander Hollowell have compiled a list of easily accessible string trios from the International Score Music Library Project, graded each individual part and movement based upon an updated and improved string rubric that judges the difficulty level of string parts for violin, viola and cello. In addition to the grading of the various works, Alexander Hollowell through his collaboration with Placilla reflects on the use of visualization in chamber music coachings from the student perspective and Kenneth Law, co-founder of this system and cello faculty member at George Mason University provides a preface to graded guide.