This master’s thesis addresses the piano accompaniments to children’s songs of Janez Bitenc. We begin by presenting the life and work of this composer, music educator, poet and writer, whose works include about five hundred children’s songs, although only a few of them include piano accompaniment. Bitenc added piano accompaniment to twenty-four songs found in the collection Naša četica koraka: zbirka otroških pesmi in priročnik za glasbeno vzgojo otroka predšolske dobe (Our Little Squad Marches: A Collection of Children’s Songs and a Handbook to Preschool Music Education) published in 1960 by Slovenian Association of Friends of Youth.
The thesis proceeds by summarizing Bitenc’s guidelines from the music education handbook for preschool children located at the beginning of the collection, followed by an analysis of the songs and their piano accompaniments presented in the second part of the collection. Reprints and later collections based on the 1960 edition are also examined, with attention to differences, corrections of errors identified during our analyses, and various additions. Furthermore, we list the piano accompaniments to Bitenc’s children’s songs composed by other authors, thus expanding the corpus with nine additional published accompaniments.
In the practical part of the thesis, we selected ten of Bitenc’s children’s songs and composed two original piano accompaniments for each: one more technically demanding and one simplified. The latter is intended primarily for teachers and preschool educators with less advanced piano skills, enabling them to enrich children’s singing with suitable piano support. All songs and accompaniments included in the practical section were also subjected to analysis.
The primary aim of the practical part is to broaden the existing corpus of piano accompaniments to Janez Bitenc’s children’s songs and to adapt these materials to the diverse technical abilities of pianists.
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