Piano Pieces History

[piano4life4ever]

I'm getting ready to perform a recital in July and I'm currently putting together the program. I want to include a little bit of history behind each piece, but I can't really find anything.
The pieces I'm performing are:

Sonata K.332 Mvt.I by Mozart
Nocturne Op.37 No.1 by Chopin
Sonata Op.13 "Pathetique" Mvt.I by Beethoven
Waltz Op.69 No.2 by Chopin
Nocturne Op.9 No.1 by Chopin
Malaguena by Lecuona

Thanks for any help you can give me.

[Bob]

Can't find anything?

New Groves.  And the other music and musician/composer encyclopedias.

Use search words like piano literature, repertoire, guide, etc. to find the books that cover composer's works in a little more depth.  The "guide to all the piano music" type books.

Then there are the more indepth books by the experts/researchers. 

Check the references and citations in all of these.  Those are the old fashioned "links" to other material.


Charles Rosen is a piano author.  He's probably written something that can help you.  I know he has books on the classical and romantic periods that will mention that stuff.


Check liner notes in the CDs.

Check online, but be careful.

I haven't heard of Lecuona, but with the others you'll be able to find at least a paragraph or two about the waltzes and nocturnes in several books.  You can probably find complete analyses of the Mozart and Beethoven.

Don't forget doctoral and masters thesis.   Google has a scholarly paper search feature. 

[Tash]

yeah cd cover notes always have something. go to your local conservatorium (if you have one) and have a fest reading the 5 million books they have in the library and you'll be bound to find something!

[rc]

K.332 you say? Just two days ago I got a disk with this sonata (Larrocha), acquainting myself with these sonatas. I've really been diggin' this first movement, 'specially the rhythmic drive of some of the themes. Good choice!

Let's see what info the liner notes have:

- Belongs to set of sonatas K.330-332
- composed in Vienna or Salzburg, probably as late as 1783. Which would've made Mozart 27 at the time.
- Mozart wrote a letter to his father in June 1784. "...the three sonatas for solo keyboard which I once sent my sister, the first in C, the second in A, and the third in F.", is what suggests them as a set.

I might be able to find you a little more info for this piece... A good idea would be to find some bios and see what each composer was up to in their lives when each piece was composed.

[amanfang]

A site I always use is allmusic.com.  I'm not sure how "scholarly" it is, but I can usually find interesting info about pieces.