First Studies in Music Biography {Free eBook}

If you are working through our free music studies based on The Child’s Own Book of Great Musicians series by Thomas Tapper, you will notice we included First Studies in Music Biography also by Thomas Tapper as a resource. This free eBook is an excellent reference and guide for Mom. It can also be used for a slightly older student who may be working along in the series.

First Studies in Music Biography includes a timeline for each composer along with many review questions that can be used for narrations: the first set are intended for oral review and the second for written narrations.

Composers covered include:

All of the composers but Mendelssohn are covered in our free music studies.

Those familiar with Charlotte Mason will appreciate the author’s admonitions when studying the book:

In the structure of the book the author has aimed to impress the pupil with rememberable things. The method of securing it is left to the individual. For those who have no special plan of procedure the following may be suggested:

Read the biographical text carefully throughout, making no effort to remember it. The mind, if at all interested in a subject, will retain some facts from a first reading. This natural retention should provide the nucleus about which to gather all that remains to be learned. One must get all that is possible out of every known fact and keep it in relation to other facts. In isolation it will be found useless.

Place little faith in memorizing. Certain facts, like the majority of dates, the distance from one town to another, the street in which a certain house stands, are infinitely more secure in books than in one’s mind.

Many will find First Studies in Music Biography a valuable reference — and it’s free!