I highly recommend all 4 of Peter Coraggio's "The Art of Piano Performance" comic books, available through Kjos. I keep his "Imagery In Music" on my piano at all times, encouraging students to use it as a music dictionary. Students enthusiastically flip through the pages for the definitions to various musical terms (and for the accompanying, often hilarious drawings).

To reinforce these terms, I try to use them (in my best Italian) at every opportunity possible. When a student describes a recent birthday party, I try to paraphrase what they say with terms like "giocoso", "allegro", or "vivace". I definitely see an increased interest in these terms when I use them at monthly classes, and students almost climb over each other with their hands raised as I hold up flashcards with musical terms. I like Hal Leonard's Set A & B; there are a total of 80 musical terms.

As always, I'd love to hear how other teacher's approach their "Italian" lessons.

-- John Bisceglia (Bisceglia2000@yahoo.com), March 26, 2001

Answers

I purchased a set of rhymes called "Italian Terms for the Musically Inclined" (avail. from Music-in-Motion). It's a collection of catchy phrases that students are likely to remember, such as "Playing fast is playing presto, like chasing your brother when he's a pesto."

I always had trouble remembering the Italian terms, until I learned Spanish. Now it's a cinch, because the 2 languages are so similar.

-- Music Educator (noname_poster@yahoo.com), March 27, 2001.

John, I like Coraggio's books too. They are really interesting, thorough, and well done.

-- Julie2 (knerr@uiuc.edu), April 05, 2001.