The practice of playing together plays a central role in the teaching and musical practice of the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole (SMF). Through this intense activity, the passion necessary to pursue the goal of deepening the study of a musical instrument is nourished.

The young and very young people who begin to study an instrument at the SMF immediately begin to play together, in more or less numerous musical ensembles.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a7YcTzJdANfjFCiy4ERZ_Ith7D9y6Krn/view?usp=share_link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DojRm9raaebX1mqhitvlFJhQo2yjclB7/view?usp=share_link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XwxIVDO9UM

The traditional method involves a rather long phase of studying the instrument in a strictly individual way, without any collective activity.
At the SMF, children combine individual instrument lessons with an intense musical ensembles activity. They immediately begins playing in a rather large group of instrumentalists of the same level and, possibly, age. This allows the sharing of difficulties and the achievement of objectives, avoiding a large part of dropouts due to boredom and loneliness.

This practice is increasingly expanded over the years, starting to have chamber music, orchestral and choral experiences as soon as possible. All this intense activity makes the learning of theoretical knowledge easier.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YtgADAQQkmgul24jxcveatM8fQ5Ft-Hz/view?usp=share_link

The musical repertoire used is initially mainly composed by reductions and transcriptions from the classical and popular repertoire. Most of the musical tracks come from the national, classical, popular and folkloric repertoires. The use of these repertoires helps to make the music to be performed more recognisable. That makes easier reaching the goals to be pursued in musical ensembles at the beginning of the learning path.

As soon as instrumental skills make possible to study and perform the original repertoires, without the need to use reductions and/or transcriptions, the use of the great Italian repertoire becomes predominant. Most of the scores are from the Baroque and Classical periods, through composers such as (for instance) Vivaldi, Corelli and, above all, Boccherini. Luigi Boccherini wrote a large amount of beautiful chamber music of not excessive technical difficulty. Having been one of the creators of the great chamber repertoire for strings, and strings and piano, Boccherini frequently used melodies and rhythms coming from the Italian and Spanish popular musical tradition (sometimes also from the French and Austrian ones). This combination of elements gives the chance to study and perform entire pieces of the main musical repertoire.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OfbhzZxL5mA5CMLZKcd5LpyHK3UvUVmV/view?usp=share_link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/150ntnEEABghUT1KwfGLbpX68hschvu0U/view?usp=share_link

Even in the choice of orchestral music repertoire the great Italian baroque and classical scores, more or less famous, become the center of the chosen repertoire.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nzqQ-vToMFvYvtwv3_HKz2BuU8nDREtl/view?usp=share_link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jNtWd8aYsBcVgqhRt_1iTs7iKYd5d0Wx/view?usp=share_link

This intense but pleasant work allows us to achieve notable results, managing to study and refine compositions from harder repertoires as well as from the great symphonic repertoire. This path involve also pieces from the famous Italian Opera composers, first of all Verdi, where we can also involve vocal soloists and choirs in the activities. 

In this way the Italian tradition exemplified by the V.I.V.A. Verdi motto, connected to the historical moment of the Italian indipendece wars, manages to give a significant benefit to the practice and study of music. But at the same time, the entire National repertoire becomes the musical literature used in the educational path of young students. It gives a decisive contribution to the transmission of music making to a large portion of the youth population and to the development and diffusion of practicing and listening to music among young people, their friends and families.