Chaconne

Homeschooling has been the best learning experience of my life. Through teaching my children, I'm learning so much. I've heard it said that if you want to really learn something; teach it. It's proved to be a true saying.

This year we embarked on homeschooling via the Charlotte Mason method. Her method differs from the more classical method we had been using for the other 5 years. I'm still internalizing it all, but go check her out for yourself. Read her books, check out a few blogs.

What I'm finding to be so refreshing is utilizing living books, and the composer and artist studies. I'm a total newbie, so I'm following Ambleside online's schedule (but not to the T). We did composer and artist study before, but not like we are now. I'm being exposed to musical pieces like never before.

This term we are studying Bach (Johann Sebastian as opposed to one of his many other relations that were also composers). The first 4 weeks the listening selection was the "Magnificat." These next 2 weeks we'll listen to "Chaconne."

By simply looking for a recording of Chaconne, I've been introduced to the musical genius of Jascha Heiftetz. He is so moving to listen to. check out the youtube recording of the "Chaconne" then compare it to this recording by another artist. The same piece, yet they sound so different. (the heifetz version I linked to also has an organ accompaniment, but trust me, that's not what makes it so much better.) The second version is good (he's been playing the piece for 50 years) but IMHO can't touch the Heifetz version.

Really, even if you don't normally do classical music, you gotta take the time to listen to this one.