Cello Grade 7

Saint-Saëns - The Swan

Camille Saint-Saëns' Le cygne (1886), or The Swan, was one of his most popular pieces of music during the span of his life, although the general public was not aware that it was actually just a part of a larger suite, at the time. The Swan is actually the 13th movement of a suite called The Carnival of the Animals (1886), or the Grande Fantasie Zoologique, as Saint-Saëns referred to it. It was intended to be a "fun" piece, to satisfy the composer's mischievous wit. Saint-Saëns, throughout his teaching and compositional career, enjoyed writing or improvising parody pieces that made fun of a certain composition or a musical style. At the École Niedermeyer, where he taught some of France's brightest young musicians, he would often escape from the lessons by leading the students in parodies of this type. Saint-Saëns did not allow for The Carnival of the Animals to be published during his life, because he feared that it would take precedence over his more serious works. The work was eventually published, though, after the composer's death, by order of his last will and testament.

Bach - Bourrée 1 & 2 - Suite 3

For this suite, as in the fourth suite, Bach uses a pair of Bourrées for the galant element, (the galant style was drawn in opposition to the strictures of the Baroque style, emphasizing light elegance in place of the Baroque's dignified seriousness and high grandeur). These reinforce the sense of buoyant optimism that pervades the work, though a sudden minor-key turn in the second Bourrée reminds us that no triumph is ever complete. The second bourrée, though in C minor, has a two-flat (or G minor) key signature. This notation, common in pre-Classical music, is sometimes known as a partial key signature. The first and second bourrée of the third suite are sometimes used as solo material for other bass instruments such as the tuba, euphonium, trombone and bassoon.

Advanced Left Hand Technique

Developing Bow Control for Advanced Grades

Squire - Tarantella

Trinity grade 7 aural tests

Trinity scales bowing exercise. Choose 1 scale from syllabus to play with hooked bowing. Play with a repeated dotted quaver - semi-quaver rhythm ( 1 sound for each note). The bow should stop before each semi-quaver with a clear separation heard.