ABSTRACT

Contemporary piano compositions have been neglected in piano instruction due to a difficulty in assessing 20th century contemporary teaching literature and lack of understanding of piano teachers on teaching method. Thus, this study investigated a considerable amount of contemporary piano literature employing innovative compositional techniques to introduce compositions of avant garde style to intermediate piano students. The innovative compositional techniques examined in this study were as follows: prepared piano, inside the piano technique, harmonics, tone clusters, aleatoric music, and graphic notation. The purpose of the study is to provide a list of pieces and teaching suggestions, which could be used to introduce innovative compositional techniques. One intermediate-level piano piece for each innovative technique was selected for in-depth analysis and detailed illustration of effective teaching strategies. The teaching suggestions devised for each piece included the following: ① types of innovative compositional technique used in each work; ② analysis of musical features; ③ technical elements regarding pianistic skill; ④ performance considerations; and ⑤ creative keyboard activities. It is hoped that a list of pedagogical piano repertoire and the instructional ideas presented in this paper will assist piano teachers to make a repertoire selection and to gain pedagogical insight for teaching 20th century innovative piano pieces.

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