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WHAT’S YOUR REP? Integrative
Approaches and Perspectives to
Repertoire Selection
By Matthew Rotjan
The school year is underway, and we are hard at work in
our music classrooms preparing for concerts. Some of us left
school last year with our concert seasons already planned, and
some maybe chose a piece or two before walking out that door
in spring/summer. Or, perhaps we waited until the start of the
school year to get to know our students or offer them some
input on the decision-making progress.
Regardless of where you fall in this timeline and method
of selecting repertoire for the school year, it can be
important to check in and consider how we choose our
pieces. Often in our field, music educators and conductors
take the view that repertoire is the curriculum (Reynolds
2000)—a view that repertoire should contain everything
we hope our students will learn. There also are views that
repertoire needs to be part of a larger whole, part of a
curriculum that uses repertoire as a means to curricular
end rather than the end itself. Clearly, one need not
be placed or labeled as being only on one side of this
conversation; our philosophies of repertoire, pedagogy, and
selection are likely more complex.
Curricular objectives and experience in our positions
may steer us toward certain repertoire, sometimes rotating
through pieces every couple of years. We are comfortable
with certain pieces and know “they work” with our groups,
giving students what we believe they need in our programs.
Depending on this core repertoire approach—the “tried and
true”—is a common and healthy practice for many of us. It
gives us a foundation upon which we can gain experience
teaching pieces and feel comfortable with our approach to
quality rehearsals.
There also is plenty of room to interrogate our practices of
selecting repertoire for our students. Relying on our comfort
zones and familiarity with certain pieces gives us a sense of
safety with teaching that is important. Yet, the problem is also
just that: we often depend on safety—on the tried and true—
in an age of cultural, technological, and musical multiplicity.
Our schools and classrooms are increasingly diverse, and
our repertoire should reflect the students in our classrooms.
Popular music is the dominant style preference of students,
yet many music teachers consider it only a treat, to be given
sparingly for study in class.
There are disconnects between musical experiences at
home and in school (McPhail 2013) that open up spaces for
dialogue with our students about how we might bridge the
gap and provide more musical relevance. Routine experiences
in our field may render us experts at trying to produce a
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better rendition of that same repertoire each time, instead
of expanding our curiosity of what we might learn from the
music or perhaps choosing other pieces (Allsup 2015).
We as music educators need to review what we give to our
students in the way of music literature. My hope is that we
can examine ourselves and be honest about why we choose
certain pieces and leave out others. I hope that we consider
the implications of repertoire for teaching at a deep level—
taking into consideration the educational leverage that
literature may afford for advancing our knowledge of music
and instrumental technique, but also creativity, diversity, and
aesthetics. In this article, I introduce multiple perspectives of
repertoire selection and some resources that might be helpful
in allowing us to make these choices.
Some Perspectives on Repertoire
As we work to select our repertoire, we know how important
it is to think through selections carefully—we consider the
strengths and weaknesses of our students and ensembles,
creating a balanced program, length, and several other factors.
It is unlikely that any of us devote our selection entirely to one
main approach (e.g., technique only). Rather, we probably
negotiate, prioritize, and align more closely with certain
approaches and perspectives and less with others.
Based on conversations with other teachers, familiarity with
current research and literature, and my own experiences as
a teacher, below I offer brief outlines of some perspectives
and ask that you reflect on what you might align in repertoire
selection and teaching. The perspectives include technical,
aesthetic/affective, musicianship, critical, creative, and
alternative/eclectic.
The Technical Perspective
This perspective links repertoire primarily as a curricular
tool to increase student playing ability on their instrument.
Repertoire we provide offers enough challenge for students
so that they can grow their musical technique through the
study of particular pieces. For example, we might choose a
piece because it allows students to develop knowledge of the
fingerboard and involves a lot of shifting to a certain position
or two. The pieces are carefully chosen to bridge the gap
between previous knowledge and new knowledge/skills. The
new knowledge and skills are attainable through the repertoire.
Pieces are challenging, but not too challenging; pieces are easy,
but not too easy.
American String Teacher
Vol. 68, No. 1, February 2018, pp. 38­–42
DOI: 10.1177/0003131317743170
Copyright © 2018, American String Teachers Association

Consider making repertoire selection a topic of conversation
throughout the year, perhaps asking students to evaluate the
music being studied, contribute requests, and discuss why a
piece may or may not be suitable for study in class.
This concept of assimilating new content and skills
attainably—what many refer to as “the zone of proximal
development”—may come into play as we think about where
students are on a technical level and where we want them
to be (Hopkins 2013; Vygotsky 1978). If we choose pieces
that are too easy or demanding, we are not programming in
their zone. The technical perspective emphasizes repertoire
selection for individual and ensemble growth. Repertoire may
build on lesson material and need to fit certain criteria that fit
our curricula, course objectives, and teaching philosophies.
We must keep in mind the implications of what we are
seeking through leveled and graded repertoire. As we come
to expect our students to increase their technical facility on
their instruments, we adopt the notion of “if they can play it,
they know how to do it. And if they know how to do it, they
know it.” Putting a focus on the “know how” of technique
is important, but it limits our view of what repertoire can
offer our students. We may end up equating performance of
high-level material with words such as “achievement” and
“quality,” prioritizing procedural know-how to the point of
choosing music that is simply more challenging technically
just because our students can play it—as opposed to looking
to other teaching points when our students meet performance
expectations.
In effect, such a focus on level may reduce our concept of
what a robust music education might mean in our ensembles.
It may also communicate an overemphasis on the importance
of level as a value system that we project as teachers. We
know that the term level carries with it certain criteria for
pieces, often helping us select pieces and provide a label for
our students. We need only look at festival manuals and
publisher catalogues to see this. Level also carries with it a
sense of prestige at contests and festivals, and for our schools
and districts. Selecting literature that offers great technical
challenges is only one piece of the puzzle of repertoire
selection.
The Aesthetic and Affective Perspective
Many of us hold dear a desire for our students to appreciate
music. Many times when talking with other teachers, I have
heard, “I want my students to be lifelong lovers of music. They
don’t need to be professionals, but I want them to purchase
concert tickets and to patronize the arts.” These phrases
are well intentioned, but the idea of developing aesthetic
sensibilities through repertoire requires study of music and
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discussion of our aesthetic judgments (Reimer 2003). When
we select music that we think will build on these sensibilities,
we cannot assume that the music will “speak for itself ” and
develop aesthetic awareness through pedagogical osmosis.
We might instead participate in spoken and/or written
dialogue with our students, asking, “What do you like about
this piece and why/not?” “What is your favorite part?” For
many of us, conversations in class are antithetical to our
preparation and training to run solid rehearsals. Rather, the
idea of “less talking, more playing” is seen as best practices
for effective rehearsals. Discussion through thoughtful
questioning, however, allows for students to articulate their
own ideas and ask questions (Allsup and Baxter 2004).
For teachers, these questions open up an opportunity for
reflection, to consider what we deem to be “good” music.
They may make us and our decisions vulnerable to critique,
but also afford stimulating discussion and learning.
Furthermore, we might examine our own aesthetic filters of
what we consider to be “quality” music for students to study
in school. Critiquing what we consider “good” and “quality”
music is healthy for our profession, as it may help us gain
confidence in what repertoire we provide while encouraging
introspection about what we might be ignoring: Are we
providing a breadth suitable for us to claim that students
are exposed to a diverse selection of literature? What does
“quality” mean to us as string teachers? The authority we have
as teachers to choose literature and facilitate its selection with
our students empowers us to filter and be gatekeepers of what
we communicate to our students as (un)worthy of study in
our classrooms.
The Musicianship Perspective
The musicianship perspective captures the essence of what
many of us hope our students will achieve: high-quality
performance in a broad sense. We might choose repertoire
that allows them to put all of that technique and procedural
know-how to use within a certain musical tradition (Elliott and
Silverman 2015). The more students study a particular kind of
music, the more they become inducted as performers into that
style. And when we as teachers coach them on performing in
that style, we call our students more competent musicians.
For example, we might teach students to interpret and perform
dynamics differently in Bach than we would Mozart, Beethoven,
or Bernstein. The rules of musicianship are largely left to we
who have gained entry into the world of being called musicians.
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When students are afforded opportunities to change a dynamic, a
note, a chord, an articulation, and so on, they are offered creative
possibilities in the strings class.
The rules are passed down from one of us to another in the
names of tradition and training. To what end, though, are
we willing to accept the rules of musicianship in a particular
style? The authenticity of pieces of music that we select for our
students in schools and lessons is sometimes synonymous with
quality, and also at many times at odds with it.
As many of us attempt to choose pieces that stay near and
dear to the aesthetic of the originally composed literature, we
also struggle with issues of instrumentation, changes in form,
tempo, register, and so on. Does striving for authenticity
mean that we have our students alter their tuning when we
perform music by Bach? How do we negotiate authenticity
in pieces that cross over musical styles, such as Copland’s
El Salon Mexico or an orchestrated version of “The Irish
Washerwoman?”
The musicianship perspective is further complicated when
we wrestle with issues of authenticity in popular music.
Performing music by Coldplay, for example, in an orchestral
setting inherently accepts the compromises between the type
of ensemble (small band vs. orchestra), instrumentation,
and also the traditional way of learning the songs (largely
aural and experimental vs. notated and highly structured in
school ensembles) (Countryman 2012). The same may go
for performing music from around the world not originally
written for our traditional string instruments. Yet choosing to
perform these pieces is a worthy endeavor when we consider
the broad range of exposure our students should have in
schools.
The Critical Perspective
This critical perspective of repertoire selection critiques
the mainstream cultural texts that we provide our students
(Giroux 1994). Some of its goals are to broaden our selections
to be more inclusive of what music is as a whole, versus music
privileged in the Western orchestral canon. Honoring the
diverse perspectives of our students in regard to their cultural
backgrounds and interests is important when choosing
repertoire from a critical standpoint. Representing their
various backgrounds and identities with the goal of reducing
inequality of whose music is selected and how it might be
taught are cornerstones of this approach.
This perspective is often coupled with teachers’ intentions
to program music from around the world and other
cultures. Unfortunately, in orchestra and most ensemble
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settings, these pieces are often seen as “add-ons” to
repertoire beyond the Western canon. In other words, they
are sometimes there to give an impression of balance to a
program, or as a way to acknowledge that music is diverse
(Campbell 2001).
Although diverging from the Western canon to feature
music from other styles and locations is an attempt to branch
out, it may well be only a token nod to giving students a
piece to play from another culture. Because our society is
itself full of its own multiple perspectives and cultures, the
term multiculturalism falls short of what we might be trying
to do. Perhaps pairing repertoire as a means to performance
with lessons discussing culture, history, and life experiences
would provide leverage for critical learning. This might mean
studying different kinds of fiddle music, such as from the
Irish, Scottish, Eastern European, and American Appalachian
traditions. We might search not only for music that crosses
cultural boundaries and traditions, but also diversity in race,
gender, nationality, and general style.
As a group of string teachers, we might take action to
reassess our manuals and repertoire lists to expand the
diversity of their cultural range beyond the Western canon of
largely white male composers. We might consider breaking
down the barriers of what it means to be a traditional
orchestra learning music by notation, studying popular music
by using chord changes and our aural skills, and studying
fiddle music through call and response.
The Creative Perspective
Are students in our classes allowed to change what is written
in a score? If you answered “yes,” then there is creative
potential in your approach to repertoire selection and
teaching. When students are afforded opportunities to change
a dynamic, a note, a chord, an articulation, and so on, they
are offered creative possibilities in the strings class. Creating a
loop, adding a trill, adding a drum beat, changing a tempo, or
altering instrumentation affords possibilities for rearranging
and recomposing pieces. They offer a generative ideal of
repurposing, reimagining, and rearranging as creative musical
practice and composition.
Improvising over chord changes in repertoire may also be
a curricular and philosophical goal that we have, so teachers
aligning with this perspective may choose repertoire that
includes improvisation as well. Selecting repertoire to

leverage creative potential might mean seeking pieces that
have a solid framework in their arrangement of musical ideas,
but that also allow us to add things to the music.
Selecting repertoire based on the creative perspective means
seeing pieces as affording the opportunities for creativity. We
might look at a viola part that is uninteresting, and see an
opportunity to rearrange or recompose it with our students.
We might seek pieces that have ample opportunity for
improvisation.
The Alternative/Eclectic Perspective
We as string teachers are struggling with how we categorize
the music that we study, partly because of our ties to traditions:
the music we grew up studying and listening to; the music we
studied in our teacher preparation courses (think methods
classes, music history, and theory courses). Because the
Western canon is traditionally such a large part of our own
preparation in becoming musicians and educators, we develop
terms to denote “other” types of music: jazz, patriotic, show
tunes, pop, fiddle, electronic, mariachi, polytonal, and world
music. These styles are often referred to as alternatives to the
Western canon.
The term eclectic is mainstream as well, and many of us
have worked to incorporate music as a whole art form
into our classrooms, instead of favoring certain music
that we ourselves are comfortable with because of our
own preparation and induction into what it means to be
a musician. Selecting music in this perspective is often
interpreted as choosing music for strings that is not standard
orchestral repertoire or composed specifically for an
orchestra within a so-called orchestral tradition. Many of
the perspectives above overlap with this approach: popular,
fiddle, and improvised music often fall into this category. We
need only to look at our festival manuals and lists to see they
are neglected in representation to the dominant, Western
classical traditions.
It’s More than the Repertoire—It’s Us
You may have read the above perspectives and agreed or
disagreed with their boundaries. More likely, you found
yourself falling into multiple categories of perspectives.
Hopefully, we as educators take the view of interconnectedness
of these perspectives—perhaps more web-like, rather than
mutually exclusive or binary. But perhaps we identify as
being more one or the other, or being nervous to adopt a new
perspective or talk about it with each other. An integrated,
more comprehensive approach to selecting repertoire based
on the above perspectives may open multiple portals and
entryways for our students to engage with music in our
classrooms.
Obviously, it is not the repertoire alone that offers
students the experience in our classes—it is us as teachers in
classrooms with our students that bring the repertoire to life,
as relevant to our students, and as artistic canvases to leverage
the educational possibilities in our classrooms. Selecting
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repertoire that is beyond the Western canon or laden with
creative possibilities does not mean that our students will
experience the educational opportunities afforded by them.
Our teaching philosophies and epistemological frameworks
of how we view repertoire impact how we go about teaching
through repertoire to leverage their educational possibilities.
Knowing Our Students
Many of us struggle with relevance when choosing repertoire
for our students. Wanting to open their eyes and ears to pieces
unknown to them, we also hold a desire to recognize the music
in their lives as relevant to their musical interests. Simply
choosing music that our students might find more relevant to
their lives, such as pop music, might only be seen as caving to
their musical whims. However, selecting music for students
with a deep knowledge of them—their technical and musical
levels and also their interests—might yield more interesting
rehearsals, expansion of how we appreciate musical aesthetics,
and also greater affect and engagement in music-making
throughout the year.
Consider making repertoire selection a topic of conversation
throughout the year, perhaps asking students to evaluate
the music being studied, contribute requests, and discuss
why a piece may or may not be suitable for study in class. If
students request pieces that may not be suitable for the group,
take note of the request and consider looking around to see
whether it is available for personal practice as a solo piece or
whether other students want to get together outside of class
hours to work on it together.
Where Do We Look for Repertoire?
Resources abound for guiding us to select repertoire. Grab
a hold of a few method books and take a look through each
of them. Some books are heavy on the unison passages,
while others offer multiple parts for arrangements. You
can check any of the popular method books today and also
texts that compile musical arrangements. Explore Fiddler’s
Philharmonic, World on a String, Mariachi Philharmonic,
and Latin Philharmonic for carefully arranged renditions of
pieces outside the classical canon. Grab a hold of some classic
orchestra teacher texts that offer several titles, descriptions,
and teaching points for orchestral repertoire we might study
with our students: the Teaching Music through Performance in
Orchestra series, Teaching Band and Orchestra, and Strategies
for Teaching Strings are just a few.
Online music libraries such as Luck’s or J.W. Pepper offer a
tremendous number of catalogued pieces. Search by genre,
style, time period, composer, arranger, level, and other
criteria to see what might be available for you. Often, sample
scores and audio are uploaded to the websites so you can
become more familiar with the pieces being considered.
Lists sponsored by state music educator associations might
also be helpful in your search. Some lists are published in
print only, and others are online. Take a look at the repertoire
lists in the lists for composers, arrangers, and pieces that are
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available for young orchestras. If a piece or arrangement is
new to you, you can often search for the piece online to see
a sample score and hear a recording. In addition to looking
up the pieces in online music libraries, it often is possible to
locate the pieces and arrangements in YouTube. Performing
this kind of search on the web can help you cross-reference
pieces, so that you can locate a piece from a manual, listen to
it, see a sample score, and also watch a group perform it.
At a more local level, see if your county-wide or local music
educator association has a list of pieces performed recently at
regional and county festivals. Many local organizations keep a
record of the pieces selected for such events. Better yet, many
of these local organizations have the pieces filed away in their
libraries, available to local music educators for loan at little to
no cost.
Take time with your students to compose together. Perhaps
an entirely new composition can be generated by discussing
musical ideas, motivic inversion and retrograde, form, and so
on. Or perhaps a less daunting yet still creative lesson revolves
around changing a note, an octave, a rhythm, a bowing,
articulation, and so on. Doing so challenges both the authentic–
traditional relationships we have to repertoire and may move to
creative discourse around aesthetics, new techniques, interesting
dialogue, and new musical understandings.
And, of course, there is social media for help. There is a
rich community of networked string teachers we can all
be thankful for on Facebook. Some groups include “Music
Teachers,” “School Orchestra and String Teachers” (SOST),
and “Eclectic Styles Orchestra Directors.” In fact, the SOST
group has a Google Doc of “Tried and True” pieces that
sources input from its members. Consider joining some
groups and reading conversations about repertoire.
School Curriculum.” Research Studies in Music Education 35 (1):
7–20.
Reimer, Bennett. 2003. A Philosophy of Music Education: Advancing
the Vision. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.
Reynolds, H. Robert. 2000. “Repertoire Is the Curriculum: Repertoire
Selection Has a Major Impact on What Students Will and Will
Not Learn, and It Should Help Their Musical Understanding and
Appreciation.” Music Educators Journal 87 (1): 31–3.
Vygotsky, Lev. 1978. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher
Psychological Processes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Matthew Rotjan is on staff in the South
Orangetown Central School District (New York)
teaching string lessons and orchestra classes
for grades 3 to 8. He is also a co-conductor
of Rockland Youth Orchestra (New York) and
conductor of the InterSchool Orchestras of
New York’s Morningside Orchestra. Actively
immersed in connecting theory to practice in
music education, string pedagogy, and teacher
preparation, Matthew recently earned his
doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia
University, where his dissertation research explored the complex
relationships between student interests and identities, teacher
training and philosophy, and repertoire selection practices in public
school orchestras.

References
Allsup, Randall Everett. 2015. “Music Teacher Quality and the
Problem of Routine Expertise.” Philosophy of Music Education Review
23 (1): 5–24.
Allsup, Randall Everett, and Marsha Baxter. 2004. “Talking about
Music: Better Questions? Better Discussions!” Music Educators Journal
91 (2): 29–33.
Campbell, Patricia Shehan. 2001. “Heritage: The Survival of Cultural
Traditions in a Changing World.” International Journal of Music
Education 1:59–63.
Countryman, June. 2012. “Still Wary after All These Years: Popular
Music and the School Music Curriculum.” In Critical Perspectives in
Canadian Music Education, edited by Carol A. Beynon and Kari K.
Veblen, 135–46. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Elliott, David J., and Marissa Silverman. 2015. Music Matters: A
Philosophy of Music Education. New York: Oxford University Press.
Giroux, Henry A. 1994. “Teachers, Public Life, and Curriculum
Reform.” Peabody Journal of Education 69 (3): 35–47.
Hopkins, Michael. 2013. “Programming in the Zone: Repertoire
Selection for the Large Ensemble.” Music Educators Journal 99 (4):
69–74.
McPhail, Graham. 2013. “The Canon or the Kids: Teachers and the
Recontextualisation of Classical and Popular Music in the Secondary

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