Great Composers Note Reading Worksheet

Here is a great composers note reading worksheet on Bach for beginning violinists. I was listening to Beyond the Music podcast a couple weeks ago and their guest, Clair Allen, mentioned teaching her students about the composers of the pieces they are learning. Christine and Abigail mentioned growing up listening to cassette tapes of stories of great composers., and suddenly, it took me back to my own cassette tape collection. I loved these stories and listened to them over and over and over.

So, this gave me the idea of creating a note reading worksheet. The notes covered are only the A string notes for violin or viola. Students will identify the notes in order to fill in the missing letters so that they can read the story. It is yet another way to reinforce note names away from the instrument, and at the same time teach them about the lives of the composers as they study the Minuets. (Side note: Current scholarship has shown that Minuet 1 from the Suzuki Violin Book 1 was not written by J.S. Bach, but was composed by Christian Petzold. )

This is the first in“The Great Composers Note Reading Worksheets” specifically for beginning string players. There are resources with games and worksheets for kids learning music, but many of them are based on the keyboard. Since keyboard players most often begin reading notes on middle C, these resources don’t necessarily work for young string students. These worksheets are to help students learn their A-string notes.

Violin

Download here

Viola

Download here

Recordings

As I worked on this worksheet it got me thinking about other audio books and recordings that I enjoyed as a kid. I discovered that you can still get the CDs of the composer stories and some of them are available as downloads. One of my favorites growing up was “Mr. Bach Comes to Call.”

Podcasts

While I was searching for these I also found a couple of podcasts that tell the story of composers for kids. Classics for Kids is recorded as a radio program. They have both episodes of composer biographies as well as introducing specific pieces and works by composers. And the podcast Stories of the Great Composers for Children are audiobooks that you can subscribe to as a podcast. Because these are free, be sure and check these out.

Books

Interested in other resources about Bach? Here are links some children’s books and a coloring book that tell the story of Bach. Look for them at your local library or order them from Amazon.