About "How to Study the Accolay Concerto"

Publisher: Virtual Sheet Music

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Video Lesson Description:

Learn how to study and play the Concerto No. 1 in A minor by Jean Baptiste Accolay for violin with this premium video lesson by Prof. Roy Sonne. Prof. Sonne gives you a very detailed, step-by-step lesson with clear and easy to understand tips for every single passage. The focus is on finding the pathway between technique and musical expression.


Some interesting insights about the Accolay Concerto from Prof. Roy Sonne:

Accolay! The mystery man! We know almost nothing about him - which is amazing when you stop to think that just about every violin student in the world studies his A Minor Concerto. That is to say, every violin student who sticks with it for a while. Usually you're ready for the Accolay about your fourth or fifth year of study.
So, what do we know about Mr. Jean Baptiste Accolay? We have some dates. He was born in 1833 and died in 1900. We think he was French, or perhaps he was Belgian. And that's about the extent of it. That's all we know. And none of that is certain. Because a lot of people think that Accolay really never existed - that Accolay was in fact a pseudonym that was used by Henri Vieuxtemps who was one of the great French violinists, and violinist-composers around the middle of the nineteenth century.

Personally, I think that the musical style of the Accolay Concerto reflects a somewhat earlier time period - around 40 or 50 years earlier, perhaps around 1810 or 1820, right at the transition point from the classical era into the romantic era. So that would make him contemporary with Beethoven. It also means he was writing at the same time as Rossini and Carl Maria von Weber, as well as some very familiar violinist composers such as Kreutzer and Mazas.

It helps us to know these things. First of all it helps us to become cultured individuals and to gain a broad, detailed picture of our musical culture. And secondly it helps us to make stylistic connections - it helps us to apply things from one piece to the next and establish similarities.

We might, for instance, be playing along in the Accolay Concerto and we'll come to a passage and we'll say, "Oh yeah! That's just like that Mazas etude that I just played last month." And then we have a better understanding of how to play it, and we also begin to see how our entire musical repertoire is related. One piece is related to the next. One composer learned from the composers before him and fed into the composers after him.

So, without any further ado, let's get started on the Accolay Concerto.


About the Author:

Private violin instruction, clinics and workshops for high school string players and community orchestras, recitals, chamber music, concertos, conducting, piano accompaniment for violinists, an after-school music program for Pittsburgh's youth - these are just a few of the endeavors that keep Roy Sonne busy since his retirement from 28 years as a violinist with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and 20 years as Music Director of the Edgewood Symphony. Roy is also the creator of the School of Violin Artistry, which sponsors a series of instructional videos dedicated to "Finding the Pathway between technique and musical expression."

Somehow, Roy finds time to work with violinists in Bolivia, where he once served as the concert Master and conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra.

In retirement, he has even discovered a love of jazz, and is the founder of Strings Without Boundaries - a string and fiddling camp dedicated to introducing and cultivating jazz musicianship among classically-trained musicians.