Marked Music Project

Welcome to Plan B. People have asked what it was like to be a student at French School, and while we’ve compiled memories spanning nearly the beginning of French School to the end of the 92 year period, trying to give people a sense of Mlle. Yvonne Combe is nearly impossible since we were all children. Instead, here is my 10 year history of piano repertoire, marked.

This is created from the 10 years of NJ MEC (Music Education Council) piano competition documentation, merged together with recital programs. There is a separate list of exercise books that went in parallel (guessing as to the order since dates weren’t written in), enabling us to step up one ladder rung at a time while we also tackled competition pieces. This repository, together with the books “Fundamentals of Piano Practice” and “The Unstoppable Musician” should yield enough objective data and possible insights about how Mlle. Combe operated.

After all these decades, the sheet music is yellowed but, remarkably, the colored markings are still vibrant. They were color coded to help us with the musicality: blue for soft, red for loud, green when we weren’t paying attention and had been told something several times already.

Note: This is the repertoire of someone aged 7 - 17 who: had natural musical expression, had so so technique, was undisciplined, and did not practice.

Where there is music mentioned but no photographs, there are two possibilities. The sheet music is with my parents, or was lost in one of many boxes that mysteriously disappeared over the years during moves.