Difficulty of a piece . . . or "perception" of

[alzado]

My teacher and I were trying to find a good piece for me to play for an upcoming recital. 

I chose one piece, and said I would like to play it because it was not very difficult.  I have a great fear of freezing up, or making severe mistakes.

After my teacher heard me play the piece, she said, 'I would disagree that the piece is not difficult.  It is filled with large leaps for the left hand."

We discussed it some, and we finally concluded -- it is not difficult for ME -- because the left hand work is something I do well, and effortlessly.  Alas, I have other and different shortcomings that are not tested in this piece.

This piece would be difficult for someone who is not confident of their left hand work.

Likewise, there are going to be pieces with some passages that would give me fits where they demand technique I do not have.   

Thus, it always FRACTURES me when some expert on the forum takes a collection of pieces -- example, the Bach Two-Part Inventions, and rates the entire collection by difficulty. 

How can you do that when you do not know that particular strengths and weaknesses of the person who will be asked to play that material?  What is difficult for Joe Smith over there might not be especially difficult for me -- and vice versa.  [We do not all have the same limitations, do we?]

As much as I am skeptical of these "lists by difficulty" that appear here -- often at the request of a student starting the material -- I see that they do continue to appear.

What do you think?

[Karli]

Yes, you are right, of course !  What is difficult for one person may not be for another and what is easy for one person may not be for another.  This is why the level of difficulty placed on pieces is only relative and is meant to give just a general idea on when/how it should be tackled.  Of course, there are particular organized systems that have piano students passing from "level" to "level" and within each level, there is accepted repertoire.  I think that type of system can be some kind of light "guidance" or so, but if taken as the be all and end all of pianistic advancement, it's also a really good way for a pianist to develop "gaps" and "holes" in their musical understanding and proficiency.

No matter what, each piece will present its own particular type of language or use of the musical language.  Often the RH and LH have a kind of individual dialect or so, and a teacher or an aware student will be able to pick out what will be the particular difficulties of the piece.   Ideally, particular challenges would be addressed in a way that the challenge can be dissected and focused on bit by bit. 

These difficulties may be addressed in preparation pieces, too (and if exercises are being assigned, it should be with specific goals of preparation in mind and hopefully it will relate to a particular piece that is being learned at the time).  Learning an invention (or THE inventions), for example, is a good preparation for fugues since perhaps the biggest challenge of counterpoint is in thinking in the form of more than one complete voice at a time (and hands have to coordinate in a particular way with counterpoint), aside from whatever technical challenges each "voice" may individually present in particular areas of the piece.

[ramseytheii]

People grade these things based on a curriculum of continually expanding knowledge.  Many methods have an order of introducing problematic things at the keyboard, which is often reflected in collections of pieces like the Inventions (if you put them out of order). 

Not all of us were blessed (or cursed) to have grown up with a specific method of introducing material, so this gradation is not useful for everybody.  However it is can be useful in the sense that you can use it to classify technical issues, and determine what pieces are within your reach.

Walter Ramsey