Joy to the World with Vivaldi’s Gloria

Techniques

Position Work

You know how some moms sneak vegetables into sauces and smoothies to get their kids to eat more vegetables. I might have snuck in some techniques that my students are working on to get some extra practice. Students will encounter minor modality, 3rd position, bariolage, and there are some great long notes for practicing vibrato. The opening introduction is taken directly from Vivaldi’s Gloria, and is all in first position, then the entire first and last stanzas of Joy to the World is in D Major in 3rd position. The fingering printed so they shift in and out of 3rd position on an open string.

Vibrato

Then the choral theme from Gloria is in the melody part. The ensemble parts and piano have the orchestra parts from the Gloria. The choral part uses dotted quarters, eighths and half notes. And boy do those half notes make great vibrato notes!

Relative Minor, Harmonic and Melodic Minor

The next technique comes in the second stanza which is in B minor. I use both the harmonic minor and natural minor for this stanza. Students have to navigate between A natural and A-sharp. When they first sight read through this, I get a lot of looks. They haven’t heard or thought about changing modalities and it seems to hit them really funny. My students are pretty open with me about their thoughts and several made comments like:

• “That’s weird.”
• “I don’t like this at all!”
• “Well that’s different.”

I waited a couple weeks, and the minor modality grew on them. This week they told me that now they really liked it. (Ah! Maturity… just like a tomato takes time to mature on the vine, so do students.) In the opening theme there is the rapid sixteenths that use bariolage bowing. I was curious to see how my students would do with this technique as it hasn’t been in their literature very much. My students in Suzuki Book 3 and 4 have loved it. One student said it was her favorite part!