Mozart's Magic Flute Overture is one of 11 classical pieces for advanced orchestra included in Richard Young's Comprehensive String Pedagogy & Curriculum. A portion of the proceeds of sales for all CSPC music goes to support free music education at The People's Music School.

Every one of the overtures to Mozart’s iconic operas is a mini-masterpiece. This particular overture was chosen for CSPC not just because of its quality, but because it is so useful from a pedagogical perspective. One reason is because of the difficulty (for all string instruments) of playing the many rapid 4-note figures clearly, evenly, and perfectly in tune. Another reason is because it is written in E-flat major, which is an unidiomatic key for string instruments. It’s not a coincidence that most violin concerti are in G, D, A, and E. Since these are the keys that correspond to the open strings, they are more practical to play than other keys. We see the same thing with concerti for viola, cello, and bass. More often than not, they are composed in the keys that take full advantage of these instruments’ open strings. It is worth noting that the solo viola part in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante originally used scordatura tuning. That is, the strings were tuned up a half-step which enabled passages that were written in the key of E-flat to be played as if they were in D major. However in the Magic Flute overture, there is no such crutch – for the violas or anyone else.
-Richard Young

Full program notes are included with the score. There are fingerings and bowings in all the string parts of every one of CSPC's pieces. These "cooked-in" technical solutions target the particular levels of the students. They are not just pragmatic but "musical."

Please note that due to a loss of source files, the PDF files of the music have been generated from scanned copies of printed parts. While every effort has been made to produce high quality parts, the limitations of scanning will result in some degradation of print quality.