A pedagogical guide to the teaching of selected transcriptions of trombonist Ralph Sauer (b. 1944): : annotations, exercises, and recording

The purpose of this project was to provide a pedagogical resource for students and teachers that highlights selected transcriptions of former Los Angeles Philharmonic principal trombonist Ralph Sauer (b. 1944), and how those works can be used in an applied instruction setting. The compositions include Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances, Debussy’s Syrinx, Pergolesi’s Sinfonia in F, Sonata in B-flat by Mozart, and Saint-Saëns The Nightingale.

The sections dealing with pedagogical concepts are presented as conversationally as possible to facilitate ease of understanding by teachers of any background and level. Educators who are not trombonists or are otherwise not wholly familiar with the presented repertoire can still able to borrow phrasing directly from the document. The musical examples enable teachers to quickly identify sections of the work that may prove useful to students. At the time of this writing, there are no commercially available recordings of the chosen pieces as they appear from the publisher. Therefore, the recording is intended to render the music exactly as it is printed in the published version, and to be as free of personal musical interpretation as possible. The works were chosen to cover a range of ability levels, from early college through the graduate level. All the included pieces are published, as of July 2019, and available for purchase online from Cherry Classics Music.