Ronit Seter, Ph.D.
Musicologist
Piano and Theory Teacher
My teaching experience as a piano and music theory teacher spans over two decades of teaching: beginning in 2000 in Falls Church, and since 2010, in Fairfax City, VA. I am a proud member of the Northern Virginia Music Teachers Association. I also taught musicology at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University, and American University – which have all been wonderful experiences. Still, I am elated to have the opportunity to teach children, one on one, with the explicit desire to direct them through the process of playing and enjoying their pianos.
First and foremost, however, I am proud to describe and discuss my students. During the last decade, they have participated successfully – and consistently – in four yearly-held events of the Northern Virginia Music Teachers Association. The first is the Fall Festival, where they have the fun of playing romantic, gentle music – and contrast it with contemporary, dissonant, spiky, spooky – and even more fun compositions. Then, there is the Theory Mastery Day. Oh, these scales! 5 sharps?? Of course, the B major (no, they do not forget the g# minor), and especially, they like the ear-training, which is always perplexing and challenging. We also play good old Bach, every single year, for the NVMTA Bach Baroque Festival and Competition. We mostly play J. S. Bach’s miniature masterpieces (minuets, short preludes and fugues, inventions), and the quirky, exciting Scarlatti Sonatas. Some of us have reached the level of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier. Finally, every single year we can’t wait for the Sonata Festival, and for those NVMTA trophies for all of us!
What else? I held theory workshops for students from several selective studios of local teachers in preparation for the Virginia Music Teachers Association’s Theory Mastery Day. I was invited to give presentations for teachers at the Springfield Club of Music Teachers Federations, and for the 60th anniversary concert of the Northern Virginia Music Teachers Association:
https://www.nvmta.org/member-services/nvmta-news/2010-newsletters/anniversary-concert-notes/
Finally – in my other hat – I am also an active musicologist, that is, a scholar of music history. I have published in the Oxford Music Online (the leading encyclopedia of music) and several of the major musicological journals in the US. It’s been fun to travel for invited presentations in Europe; I’ve participated in many conferences across the US, and in Europe and in Israel. I have presented twice, among other places, at the Library of Congress. I received my Ph.D. at Cornell University in 2004.