40 piece challenge for strings

Get your pupils to learn 40 pieces in a year – that's a crazy idea, right? Surely there's enough in the three exam pieces, to say nothing of scales and arpeggios, sight-reading and aural tests, and maybe a couple of carols at Christmas? What about the cost of all that music? And couldn't it actually be detrimental to a child's musical development to skate through a lot of music and not dig too deep?

The 40 Piece Challenge is the brain-child of Australian piano teacher and composer Elissa Milne. In the early 2000s she became increasingly frustrated at her students spending so much time learning just a few pieces each year, and experimented with different ways of increasing their engagement with a broader selection of repertoire. With a typical 40 week school year in Australia, this developed into a 40 piece challenge, or one piece a week. For this to be achievable, the pieces had to be easier than the current level of the student. Over the next decade or so, she found her pupils rose to the challenge, developed their musical skills and confidence and enjoyed playing much more. The scheme has now been enthusiastically adopted by piano teachers around the world.