SOON TO COME 1

The Joy of Mozart describes Mozart’s code for performing particular types of sounds indicated by his expression markings, and gives today’s pianists way to train and teach a different use of weight for producing these sounds on the modern piano.  These sounds take us into the heart of Mozart’s music.


There are 3 levels: 

  • the Joy of Mozart Performer and Teacher Manual, 
  • the Joy of Mozart Student Method, 
  • and the Meeting Mozart pre-performance primer.  

Find the level that is right for you:

  • If you are a teacher and/or performer, the Joy of Mozart Performer and Teacher Manual is for you.  It tells you how to learn and teach the method.

  • Students need the Joy of Mozart Student Method book, which must be taught by an experienced teacher who has trained the JoM approach through the JoM manual to proficiency.

  • Meeting Mozart is a pre-performance activity book to introduce early students to Mozart through games and stories about his childhood as a musical prodigy.

These books for today’s musicians will soon be available.

The Joy of Mozart Performer and Teacher Manual

The Joy of Mozart follows Mozart’s advice (in 1784 to the singer Aloysia Weber) to “pay attention to the markings of expression” in order to impart the “force and meaning” of his music.  The manual describes the expression markings—the same in all of Mozart’s music, their historical usage and the unique technical basis by which pianists can produce their particular types of sounds on today’s pianos. 

The Joy of Mozart manual contains both the complete student method with annotations of how to teach it, as well as an in-depth explanation of the historical basis, musical concepts and desired benefits behind the JoM approach.   The approach consists of sequences of action steps (the principles of which other musicians can adapt to their instruments).  Training the approach builds a new musical and artistic focus, as well as new skills for responding to the variety of Mozart’s markings in his music.

Professional performers and mature musicians can teach the method to themselves through this manual, but less experienced students must be taught by a teacher who has trained the approach to a fully competent level.  Insights and suggestions in the annotations give teachers and performers a perspective that would otherwise only come from years of experience with the method, including what to look for in student’s exercises and warm-ups, what to focus on when teaching the action sequences, important ways to support the student’s efforts, how to spot and correct any weakness in the student’s training progress and other important guidelines to guarantee the student’s success.

The crux of the JoM approach is a unique way of accessing and employing weight on the modern piano in order to produce the largely non-legato sounds that Mozart specified for notes through his expression markings.  By producing and hearing these sounds, the musician gains understanding of Mozart’s systematic and elemental use of his markings for expression of his music on many levels.  The Joy of Mozart thus equips musicians to represent the full experience of Mozart’s music.

 

The Joy of Mozart Student Method Book

The JoM method book consists of exercises for training the playing mechanism (all explanation for the exercises is in the Performer and Teacher).  The exercises lead to the training of approximately a dozen new actions, which are combined into sequences that automatically produce the five types of sounds for notes according to Mozart’s use of the five types of expression markings.

The action sequences are then applied to new pieces composed in Mozart’s style, exclusively for training the method’s action steps.  These pieces (less complicated than Mozart’s music) offer a comfortable musical context for training to play his more nuanced and complex works.  For early students, they also fill a gap of pieces in Mozart’s style of suitably simple pieces for early students (few exist by Mozart).  Early students who have trained the JoM pieces according to the expression markings can then use them as performance pieces.