Music Still Life

Music Recommendations

Sheet Music

For beginning singers, and intermediate singers wishing to inexpensively fill out their sheet music collection, these anthologies contain a lot of the standard works appropriate for young singers. They also contain text translations, pronounciation guides, and a bit of historical context for each song or aria. Recordings of the piano parts are also often available. However, serious singers are advised to work from more scholarly editions.

For the convenience of my students, I have provided links for the purchase of basic singing anthologies that contain many pieces I commonly use with beginning/intermediate students. By hovering over each link, you can see basic ordering info from Amazon, and clicking on the link will take you to their site. These books, as well as a wide variety of other editions, are also available from music stores around the Twin Cities, such as Schmitt Music, The Podium, and Groth Music, and on-line from J. W. Pepper.

Arie Antiche

Schirmer's "24" have been standard introductory teaching material for beginning singers for over a century, although their edition is fairly romantic. A more heavily researched and "authentic" edition by John Paton offers students greater insight into the historical style and pronounciation of the songs, although they are musically more challenging for the beginning singer.

Aria Anthologies

Formerly known as the 'Prima Donna Album,' these anthologies contain a wide variety of standard audition pieces, although the repertoire does tend to lean more heavily in the lyric direction.

Oratorio Anthologies

Singers who are interested in building their knowledge of sacred repertoire can find a lot of useful material in these anthologies.

Musical Theater Anthologies

These anthologies offer students interested in musical theater an introduction to the repertoire along with CDs that contain the piano accompaniments for practicing.

Song Anthologies

For singers just beginning to explore art song repertoire, these anthologies contain a lot of representative works from the French and German literature.

Composer Albums

Ultimately, committed singers will wish to obtain more complete collections of art songs. These books are a step in that direction, although even more complete and scholarly (and expensive...) editions are published by houses like Peters and International, while more contemporary and less mainstream composers may only be found published by houses like Boosey & Hawkes, Universal, Salabert, etc.