Melanie Spanswick: Piano Publications

Following on from our recent interview with Melanie Spanswick, the composer and author kindly took the time to answer more of our questions about her best-selling publications, her favourite pieces from First Repertoire for Little Pianists and Women Composers – A Graded Anthology, and the importance of celebrating diverse repertoire. 

Can you tell us how your journey into the music profession began?

I don’t come from a musical family and therefore I started to play the piano at the ‘old’ age of ten. I enjoyed playing, progressed fairly quickly, and at aged 15 I went to study at the Royal College of Music Junior Department. I’ve always felt privileged to study at such an institute. RCM JD was fun and I was lucky enough to teach the piano there for five years after I graduated. I entered senior RCM aged 18, studying for a further five years, all of which I thoroughly enjoyed.

After college, I started giving concerts. Mostly small solo and duo recitals around the country at various music clubs, societies, and universities, as well as playing classical concerts on cruise ships – which was how I earned my living for around 10 years. During this time I also taught - I had a teaching position at Reading University (before the music department’s demise) and I examined for the ABRSM.

I knew that eventually I needed to change direction as touring can take a toll on one’s physical and mental health. After an illness, I stopped giving concerts altogether and began teaching more seriously. I then started writing down my thoughts about learning to play and teaching the piano. This resulted in a blog which I established in 2012, which was followed, a few years later, by my various piano books and publications.

Where do you get your ideas for your compositions and publications, and what are your personal highlights?

Some publication ideas come from the publisher and others, from me. Play it again: PIANO was entirely Schott’s idea (the series was published in 2017 & 2019). One of their editorial team approached me to write this series after following my blog posts for over a year. It was a stroke of luck because my teaching notes (accompanying each piece) have proved popular with its target audience of ‘piano returners’ and I have since established a Facebook Group – Adult Piano Returners  - for this student demographic which now has a large membership.

Women Composers – A Graded Anthology For Piano (published by Schott in 2022) was my idea. It’s a topic which I have perpetually explored and, even at college, I was always interested in women artists and composers. In 2011, I enrolled to do a PhD at Royal Holloway University London to study the historical progression of women in piano teaching. Sadly (or perhaps not so sadly – everything is influenced by fate!) my intended supervisor left her university position promptly just before I was due to begin, and faced with a completely new admission process, I decided against this path but it proves that I’ve always been interested in the subject. It was my current commissioning editor at Schott who asked if I would contribute to the ongoing Schott Student Edition, writing volumes of piano music devoted entirely to women composers. We’ve made a good start and have many composers who we’d like to explore.

I approached Willis Music regarding my books First Repertoire For Little Pianists, and the President of Willis Kevin Cranley, who knows my work, was delighted to publish the series.

Regarding my compositions, this is solely down to me. Sometimes I don’t write any music for a while  - with the exception of my regular elementary piece for Pianist Magazine -  and then I suddenly need to write a lot. I’ve just finished a new piece for a colleague who is hosting an exciting project for contemporary composers. My piece for this project is dark and this is a passion for me – creating disturbing, unsettling music. On this note, I must point you towards my latest book of elementary pieces, Ghostly Piano Tales (Schott), which have proved most popular already.

Regarding First Repertoire for Little Pianists – how does teaching younger beginners differ from teaching older students, or those who have already received a degree of tutoring?

It’s a different job. I think depending on where and whom you teach, the ‘task’ or job can vary tremendously. I taught many little beginners when I was young, but today I rarely teach this age group, preferring to work with older children and teenagers. Little ones do need a specific type of empathetic teacher and they need games and, dare I say it, lesson ‘distractions’. This is why I created First Repertoire For Little Pianists, because from experience small children love to look at illustrations, and we hope those included in this series will inspire them. They love to play games - each piece in the book has some performance suggestions and games. And they also enjoy playing with their teacher - over half of the twenty-five pieces in each book are student-teacher duets.

You spoke previously about how real nerves often do not set in until one is much older – how often would you recommend students perform in public to help them get as comfortable as possible with recitals before the inevitable nerves set in?

I encourage my students to play in public as often as possible. I also ask them to participate in master classes, piano courses, play to other teachers, and perform in festivals and competitions, as well as school concerts. Small children don’t need to do all that much, but an ‘end of term’ teacher’s concert or an occasional class workshop will point them in the right direction, allowing them to become accustomed to performing their pieces in front of others.

Older students often need many ‘run-throughs’ before an exam in particular, and parents play a key role here, recording their children’s playing and organising family ‘performances’. Before exams, I suggest students ‘run’ their programme every day and record it, so they are aware of what they are doing at the piano.

What is your favourite piece from First Repertoire for Little Pianists and why?

A tricky question! Am I allowed one from each of the two books? The Grand Palace is a favourite from Book 1 – I like the ‘grand’ character, despite being a simple piece. From Book 2, I like A Fright At Night. Students love the creepy connotations and the ‘tune’ is a pastiche of a famous scary theme.

Quite a few of your titles are also available digitally, often as individual pieces - how much of an impact do you think the ability to download sheet music will have on enabling more students to learn music? 

I’m amazed at the growth in the digital market and am beginning to really benefit from it in my sales figures. Pieces of music sell very well in this format, although we only allow Play it again: PIANO to be sold as a complete book due to the heavy text context. Many students now use an iPad in lessons, and they come with their score downloaded straight from an online store, so it really is an easy and convenient way to buy music. However, I’m old fashioned and only use a hard copy!

You have been a strong advocate for women composers, particularly with the anthology series Women Composers - A Graded Anthology and with your editions of Freixas and Beach piano works – how did you discover and decide on which pieces to include in the series?

It took a lot of research. I discuss this in my lecture recital Diversity in Repertoire, which is a sixty minute presentation focusing on this anthology. It took nearly a couple of years to find suitable repertoire and I used many sources including IMSLP, Hildgard Publishing, and the Archiv Frau Und Musik based in Germany, to name a few. I also asked composer colleagues to write pieces so that contemporary music or music written by living composers is fully represented.

The series might be considered a romp through music history as well as being a graded piano series for students. Each piece contains the female composer’s biographical background and practice notes, and the series features music from over twenty countries, too, so it’s a diverse collection. I don’t know of any other series on the market that is similar in this respect. I was delighted that it won a Presto Music Award in 2022.

Do you have a favourite composer who you feel has been neglected or underrepresented in the piano canon, and are they included in your anthology series?

I love the music of the French composer Mélanie Bonis or Mel-Bonis. Although I included one of her pieces in Book 1 of the anthology (a wonderful set of ‘variations’ on the theme of Frère Jacques), I only really got to know her music properly when I compiled two books for the Schott Student Edition. These books will be published next year, but her story is a tragic one. The smaller pieces that we’re publishing are really quite unique in texture, character and harmony. They also have effective descriptive titles, rendering them perfect programmatic music for younger players.

Can you tell us about more about the composers you have featured in the anthology series, as well as your favourite pieces from the series?

There are many! Spanish composer Narcisa Freixas, who we also featured over two volumes in the Schott Student Edition, and who appears in Book 1 of my anthology with her piece L'Ocell – her music is fresh, interesting, and intrinsically Spanish of course.

A piece that I love appears in Book 2 of the anthology and I’m delighted that it was selected for the ABRSM Grade 7 2025-2026 syllabus. It’s by the Austrian composer Maria Görres and is simply entitled Children’s Song: it’s expressive and passionate - a full-on Romantic piece, and seriously worth checking out.

My two favourite pieces feature in Book 3. The first is the Prelude in D flat by the wonderful French composer Lili Boulanger, who died so tragically young that we have been deprived of a lifetime of harmonically fascinating, beautiful music.

The second is Venezuelan composer Teresa Carreño. I’ve loved her music ever since I started playing it as a junior student at the RCM. Plainte Op. 17 No. 1 is my favourite and if you enjoy a sentimental nocturnal-style work, you’ll love playing it, too.

A contemporary piece that I particularly like, also from Book 3, has been written by the Japanese composer Mai Fukasawa – Between Dawn, Noon and Midnight. It’s meditative quality has proved a favourite with audiences when I have played it at my presentations.

Sheet Music by Melanie Spanswick