C
Fifteen volumes, beginner to professional.
A guided practice video for every piece.
Music theory and composition from day one.
A complete cello curriculum
from first notes to concert repertoire.
Fifteen volumes.
A video guide for every piece.
15,000 hours of teaching built into every page.
Designed for students age 9 and up.
Younger students with piano experience may start earlier.
Backwards-engineered by a cellist, for cellists.
The best music ever written.
Not traditional songs for tradition's sake.
Every exercise exists because it solved a real problem for a real student in a real lesson.
The Cellosophy Method is a 15-volume modern cello curriculum, backwards-designed from the concert repertoire.
Theory, composition, improvisation, and lead sheet training from the start.
Cello accompaniments for every piece at every level so teachers can play duets with their students from the beginning.
Guided practice videos for every piece throughout the method.
Designed by Eric Moore, University of Michigan - summa cum laude
Triple Major: Cello Performance, Music Theory, and Music History.
Co-creator of the Aaron-Moore Popper Etudes edition, which was required at Juilliard and the University of Michigan starting in 2012.
Every method needs a destination.
Cellosophy's is the Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto: the most frequently performed concerto
in the US alongside Dvořák.
The Saint-Saéns sounds more difficult than it is.
It works well for competitions and it's a piece every serious cellist plays.
Working backwards from that concerto, Eric asked:
which pieces scaffold to Saint-Saëns?
The French Romantic showpieces:
The Swan, Allegro Appassionato, Élégie, Papillon, etc.
Which etudes scaffold to those pieces?
Which 3-octave exercises scaffold to those etudes?
Then, which fundamentals scaffold to those exercises?
And so on, until the first notes.
The entire 15-volume curriculum is the answer to that question.
Like Star Wars, Cellosophy was built in trilogies, starting with the second.
Preparation Volumes (coming 2028-2029):
Cellosophy Junior (ages 7-9)
and L'il Cellosophers (ages 4-6).
The Suzuki Method was completed in the 1950s.
Before Elvis.
It was designed for 30 3-year-olds to learn by rote.
It requires a parent present at every practice session.
It teaches no note reading, nomusic theory, no score reading.
No composition, no improvisation, no lead sheets.
The pieces are exclusively by men.
Teacher certification costs $800 or more.
To learn to teach Twinkle.
Most students start cello from 4th-6th grade, in school.
They already need to read music.
They already practice without a parent.
Suzuki was not designed for them.
And it was not designed for cello, first.
Cellosophy was.
Suzuki
Cellosophy
Designed for age 3+
Designed for age 9+ (and adults)
Learning by rote
Reading from day one
No music theory
1,400+ theory problems per volume
No composition
Guided comp from vol 1
No improvisation
Improv from vol 2
No score reading
Score reading is foundational
Pieces exclusively by men
Women composers in every volume
Teacher certification: $800+
Teacher certification: free
No video guides
Video guide for every piece
Completed in the 1950's
UPDATED CONTINUOUSLY,
INCLUDING COMMISSIONED AND POPULAR WORKS
ABRSM provides an examination framework, not a curriculum.
It tells students what level they need to be.
It doesn't tell them how to get there.
Cellosophy is the how.
Many private teachers use no method at all.
They assign pieces based on intuition and experience.
This works fairly well for master teachers with decades of experience.
It works less well for the 90% of teachers who are still developing their pedagogical instincts.
Cellosophy gives every teacher a proven sequence with built-in scaffolding, video demonstrations of every piece, and predictable "envelope moments": the specific places where students will struggle, identified across 15,000 hours of teaching the same material.
Envelope moments are so typical that you could hand a new student a stack of sealed envelopes when they begin and have them open them in order during the course of their lessons. That's how predictable this method is.
Cellosophy features music from nine centuries.
Most pieces in Volumes 1-2 are not originally for cello: they're transcribed from orchestral, keyboard, and vocal works.
This avoids the problem of students learning simplified arrangements and then being confused by the real thing later.
By Volume 3, most pieces are complete, unabridged transcriptions.
Starting in Volume 4, the 2nd cello accompaniment appears on every page, building chamber music instincts from the intermediate level.
HILDEGARD VON BINGEN CARITAS VARIATIONS JOHN DOWLAND FLOW MY TEARS
CARL FRIEDRICH ABEL ADAGIO AND ALLEGRO FOR SOLO CELLO JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH MENUET FROM FRENCH SUITE NUMBER FIVE | MENUET FROM FRENCH SUITE NUMBER TWO | MENUET FROM VIOLIN PARTITA NUMBER THREE JEAN-PHILIPPE RAMEAU OVERTURE TO ZAÏS ANTONIO VIVALDI WINTER MOVEMENT THREE
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN FÜR ELISE | VIOLIN CONCERTO FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN SURPRISE SYMPHONY WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART PIANO CONCERTO NUMBER TWENTY-FOUR
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN SYMPHONY NUMBER NINE VARIATIONS JOHANNES BRAHMS SYMPHONY NUMBER ONE FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN NOCTURNE 9.2 FELIX MENDELSSOHN SONG WITHOUT WORDS 38.6 MODEST MUSSORGSKY PROMENADE FROM PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION SERGEI RACHMANINOFF PIANO CONCERTO NUMBER TWO NICOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV SCHEHERAZADE PIOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY SYMPHONY NUMBER FIVE
BÉLA BARTÓK TWO HUNGARIAN SONGS | DANCE SUITE | ROMANIAN FOLK DANCES MOVEMENT ONE CLAUDE DEBUSSY SYRINX FOR SOLO CELLO GUSTAV MAHLER SYMPHONY NUMBER ONE MAURICE RAVEL ALBORADA DEL GRACIOSO ERIK SATIE GYMNOPÉDIES FOR SOLO CELLO
LEAH ASHER CAPRICE FOR SOLO CELLO LERA AUERBACH LONELY SUITE FOR SOLO CELLO EVE BEGLARIAN I AM WRITING TO YOU FROM A FAR-OFF COUNTRY FOR CELLO VOICE AND THREE MULTI-TRACK CELLOS GYÖRGY KURTÁG PERPETUUM MOBILE FOR SOLO CELLO MISSY MAZZOLI WAYWARD FREE RADICAL DREAMS FOR SOLO CELLO ERIC MOORE FISSION FOR SOLO CELLO | NINE CLOUDS FOR SOLO CELLO | SONG WITHOUT WORDS NUMBER ONE FOR SOLO CELLO DANIEL PESCA MOTO PERPETUO NUMBER ONE FOR SOLO CELLO | MOTO PERPETUO NUMBER TWO FOR SOLO CELLO MARTIN TORCH-ISHII REFLECTION FOR SOLO CELLO
AIR ALONE IN KYOTO FOR SOLO CELLO ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER MUSIC OF THE NIGHT JOE HISAISHI THE MERRY GO ROUND OF LIFE FOR SOLO CELLO EDGAR MEYER SHORT TRIP HOME BRANDON VANCE MEAGHAN'S MOONBEAM DREAM THEATER STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS FOR SOLO CELLO
35 composers. 9 centuries.
From Hildegard von Bingen (1098) to commissioned works written for this method.
Women composers in every volume.
Every volume includes extensive music theory, not as a separate workbook to be ignored, but woven into the daily practice routine.
One line of theory a day, seven lines per page, one page per week.
Volume One alone contains 1,400 theory problems: pitch identification, interval identification, guided composition, free composition, enharmonic respelling, rhythmic identification, time signature identification, rhythm math, and more.
Three units, sixteen weeks each.
In Volume Two, theory evolves into daily improvisation and weekly composition.
Students improvise in the key of their current piece, compose their own music in that key, practice it, and prepare it alongside the assigned repertoire.
Graphic score notation (white, grey, and black gradient grids) prepares students for a commissioned graphic score at the start of Volume Three.
By Volume Three, students work with chord progressions in Roman numeral and lead sheet form.
They are reading, writing, improvising, and composing from the earliest stages of their development.
I have the data: the students who do the theory every week progress 25% faster.The ones who also improvise and compose progress faster still.
Every piece in the Cellosophy Method has a video guide. Not a performance video. A guided practice track.
Students don't know how to practice. Many professionals don't either.
The video guides are a constant practice buddy. A student clicks Play and is guided through the session with demonstrations of technique, tempo, phrasing, and common mistakes at every stage.
Teachers save 5+ hours per week on lesson prep. Students come to lessons having actually practiced correctly.
Everyone wins.
VOLUMES 1-3 (Beginning)
Each volume contains:
Companion books
VOLUMES 4-6 (Intermediate)
Each volume contains:
VOLUMES 7-9 (Late Intermediate)
VOLUMES 10-15 (Advanced)
Cellosophy is designed for students age 9 and up.
It's the first major cello method designed with adults in mind: no nursery rhymes, no assumption that a parent is sitting next to you, no learning by rote.
If you can read, you can use Cellosophy.
Each volume costs $35 (print). Most students complete one volume per year.
The video guides are included with the subscription: enroll below, or your teacher will provide access.
Every piece in the method has a video guide showing you exactly what to practice and how.
Between lessons, you're never guessing.
Select the option that best fits your goals.
Your teacher should have given you a code. Need a teacher?
Eric Moore started building the Cellosophy Method in 2010 after completing Suzuki certification and realizing he couldn't spend a 40-year career teaching Twinkle Twinkle.
He wanted a method with diverse repertoire, not just dead European men.
He wanted music theory and composition from the beginning, not memorization without understanding.
He wanted video guides so students would actually know what to practice between lessons.
And he wanted a method designed for the students he actually taught: school-age kids, teenagers, and adults.
Fifteen years, 15,000 teaching hours, and hundreds of students later, the method spans 15 volumes from first notes to concert repertoire.
He co-edited the Aaron-Moore edition of the Popper Etudes with Richard Aaron. It has been required at Juilliard since 2012.
Having played the complete standard cello repertoire, he specializes in performing the most challenging works of brand-new music for the cello.
Cellosophy is designed for students age 9 and up, including adult beginners. Students younger than 9 can start with a musician parent at home or with exceptional motivation. A junior edition for ages 7-9 and a pre-beginner edition for ages 4-6 are in development.
Yes. Cellosophy is the only major cello method designed with adult learners in mind. It teaches reading, theory, and musicianship from the start: no nursery rhymes, no rote learning, no assumption that a parent is supervising practice.
Most students complete Volume One in about a year and Volume Two in about a year. In Volume Three, students who have developed consistent practice routines accelerate significantly. Students who skip the theory and composition activities progress about 25% slower.
The video guides allow significant independent progress, but we strongly recommend working with a teacher. The method is designed for weekly private lessons with daily independent practice guided by the videos. Find a Cellosophy teacher at cellosophy.com/cello-teachers.
See section 03 above for a detailed comparison. The short version: Cellosophy teaches reading from day one, includes 1,400+ theory problems per volume, features women composers in every volume, has video guides for every piece, and teacher certification is free.
Students comfortable with 3-octave scales can enter at Volume 4. However, most transfer students need to build reading skills and position comfort first. Teachers should assess reading fluency and upper-position familiarity before placing.
Yes. Cellosophy provides the curriculum; ABRSM provides the benchmarks. Many teachers use both. The difficulty progression aligns well with ABRSM grade levels.
The video subscription includes guided practice tracks for every piece in the enrolled volume. These are not performances. They are structured practice sessions showing technique, tempo, phrasing, and common mistakes at each stage. Access options: $69/month with a certified teacher, $89/month with an uncertified teacher, or $129/month independently.
Print editions ($35) and PDF downloads ($25) are available at celloloft.com/sheet-music. A starter package including Volume One, the Rhythm Workbook, and the Bartók Mikrokosmos sight-reading book is available at a discount.
Yes, student certification will be available (starting in 2027).