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Let me ask you, is it your idea of a good time when a piece of music requires you to get out a metronome and maybe also a calculator in order to figure out exactly what’s going on what’s going on the rhythm? It’s a surprisingly intricate exercise in sounding completely at ease.

Imagine for a moment a passage where the left hand has a half-note triplet rhythm while the right hand plays two groups of triplet eighth notes followed by two groups of sextuplet sixteenth notes. And you’ll start to understand what I was up against this week.

But here’s the payoff. Once you solve the rhythmic equations and work out how it all fits together, the result is really sublime. The counting and the internal tick of the metronome fades away, and the performer is left with the freedom to let the music sing in a very natural and very free-flowing way.

For the listener, these moments provide a shifting sensation of underlying pulse. In this particular case, it doesn’t at all feel unsettling. Quite the contrary, it feels like we’re standing on safe and solid ground with a wide-open landscape around us.

And if you’re looking for something a little simpler that shares this autumn theme, I’ll also be playing an intermediate piece by Wendy Stevens called Autumn’s Awakening.

Two pieces at very different levels that both find something beautiful in the season’s changes. Coming up next on the Piano Pedagogy Playlist.

Greetings and welcome. I hope your October is off to a wonderfully pumpkin-spiced start.

My name is Luke Bartolomeo. I’m a pianist, a teacher, and also a developer of music education apps for kids, including Flash Note Derby and Rhythm Swing. Each Monday on this podcast, I play through some of my current favorites from the piano teacher’s repertoire, written by living composers.

So we’re entering the fourth quarter, so to speak, of our journey through 12 pieces depicting the 12 months of the year by composer Chris Kane. You heard all about October’s rhythmic challenges in my introduction, but I have a feeling when you actually hear this piece, you might be inclined to wonder what all my kvetching was about.

Much of this piece actually adheres to traditionally structured meter, and the places where things start to get a little hairy-looking in the score hopefully sound very natural and easy, if I’m doing my job right. The composer describes it as a movement that is calm, contented, and at peace with itself.

In the end, as has been the case with so many of the movements from this collection, I thoroughly enjoyed not only the end result, but also the process of learning this piece. One of my favorites for sure from Chris Kane’s A Year in 12 Keys, here is October.

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While working on that piece, I realized one really nice thing about giving your advanced students music written in our own time. It’s the opportunity for them to find their own way through a piece that doesn’t come with generations of expectations and limitations about how it should be played.

You don’t have hundreds or even dozens of recordings to reference. Sometimes there aren’t any at all. It can give you the feeling of being a bit of a musical pioneer who has discovered a new land waiting to be explored.

Now for something at the early intermediate level that provides its own interpretation of the modulation of the seasons. We’ll turn to a piece by Wendy Stevens, Autumn’s Awakening.

As you listen to this selection, you might be inclined to think that it sounds a little bit above the early intermediate level. But the composer has done a very good job of distributing notes between the hands in such a way to avoid awkward reaches or stretching.

Now the left hand does have a lot of four-note chords. One of them is a major seventh chord, quite a reach. So I could see that as being a factor to consider when assigning this piece.

It begins with a series of cross-hand arpeggios that gives the impression of being a sort of introduction. But then that idea continues and continues. And you begin to assume that that is what this piece is about. A cross-hand arpeggio piece creating a mood and an atmosphere.

And then out of the blue we’re hit with a yearning melody accompanied by the lush four-note chords I mentioned. Only then do we realize that all of that build-up at the beginning was really an extended introduction of sorts.

The composer Wendy Stevens describes the piece in terms of crisp autumn air and blue skies that awaken our dreams. With those images in mind, here is Autumn’s Awakening.

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There’s something fitting about marking a change of season with music that invites us to listen a little more closely. With the shifting pulse yet contented mood of Chris Kane’s October, or the optimistic melody that triumphantly emerges from Wendy Stevens’ Autumn’s Awakening. Both pieces give students plenty to discover.

As always, links to where you can instantly purchase today’s music in the form of a digital download are in the episode description. And as well on the website pianopedagogyplaylist.com.

And just like that, we have to close the lid on this episode of the Piano Pedagogy Playlist. I hope you find a little time this week to enjoy whatever autumn looks and feels like, wherever you are.

I’ll be back next Monday with some more of what’s good in the contemporary piano teacher’s repertoire. Until then, keep nurturing the music and have a great week.

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