Mix Margaret Dylan Jones

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The YouTube videos have the most detail but you can also read about this music below.

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ISMN: 979-0-9009675-2-7. Third edition

CONTENTS

Preface & ideas for programme notes
Study instructions, grouping suggestions
12-tone row study chart

Upside-Downs
A Lazy Day
The Greedy Row Snake (ex-AMEB syllabus, gd one)
Reuben’s Big Day Out
Homage to Webern
Homage to Schoenberg
Clouds (duet or solo, a derived row, guided improvisation)
Alone in the Dark Forest (trio incorporating Upside-Downs)
Alone in the Dark Forest (printed again, arranged as a duet or solo)

PREFACE

David Tunley, at the time a professor of music
at the University of WA, referring to Child's Play.

This set of eight varied and accessible pieces was written to introduce students and teachers to the 12-tone serial technique. These character works show that serial music can be pleasant, exciting, fun, interesting, and stimulating to the imagination.

The pieces cover a range of levels from pre-initial to about grade 6 or 7, and include a trio where a novice can sit at the piano between experienced students and play a previously-learnt solo which fits into a new piece.

Though the dodecaphonic technique has been the basis of an enormous amount of music composed since the 1920s there are few other sets of educational 12-tone pieces.

The composer took delight in finding unexpected melodic shapes and novel chords in the row, stretching the technique in unusual ways to produce great variety. Most listeners would not recognise that the same tone row is used in almost every piece (only Clouds has a derivative row).

The Greedy Row Snake from Child’s Play has been played by many thousands of Australian students. This piece has sold over 23,000 copies since it was published by the AMEB and Allans Music (now AMPD) in the Series 12 Pianoforte Grade One exam book in the 1990s.

Several pieces from Child’s Play are published by Currency Press in Australian Piano Music volumes 1, 2 & 4, edited by Sally Mays. Volume 1 is in the AMEB’s piano syllabus for preliminary and second grades but The Greedy Row Snake dropped out of the exam list some years ago.

This A4 sized item is bound with sturdy covers and superior wire binding (not plastic combs).

Buy securely online via Shopify, or get your copy of this sheet music from HMP using a cheque or direct credit.