High difficulty ratings not very helpful?

[bbush]

Does anyone else find the difficulty ratings kinda useless above 8?  I mean, everything that's somewhat difficult seems to be an 8+, with no differentiation.  And there's LOTS of pieces that are definitely distinguishable for their greater difficulty above what I think of as the first-level 8+'s!

For example: all of Chopin's Polonaises are rated 8+, but I (barely intermediate) can play the Military Polonaise and am years away from approaching the Heroic or many others.  Likewise, all four movements of Alkan's Symphonie are rated 8+, and that's just not true again, since I can play 2 & 3, but 1 & 4 are bears.

Just wondering who knows how these ratings were developed, why they top out before 10, if there are other systems you like that make more distinctions, etc.

Thanks,
Bruce

[richard black]

Because by the time you get to that standard you're expected to be able to make your own mind up, not to put too fine a point on it!

[stevebob]

Bruce makes a point about something I've always found peculiar, too, and Richard's explanation does make sense.

One of the most skewed systems I've encountered is that of the online retailer Sheet Music Plus. It's based on 10 levels of difficulty, but it's as if they lopped off all genuinely advanced repertoire and then distributed the remainder:

https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/help/level-guidelines

Level 10 is represented by the Brahms Rhapsodies Op. 79!  Right.   

[bbush]

Well, that trip to sheetmusicplus was interesting, stevebob!  They at least explain their ratings up to 10 and those explanations seem to make pretty good sense.  But, yeah, they, too, do not do a very good job of actually rating the 8-and-above pieces.  Their particular example pieces (off to the right-hand side of the rating box) of their 9 and 10 rating levels seem particularly out-of-whack.

Maybe an addendum to Richard's point is that the higher difficulty ratings are necessarily subjective?  Of course, that doesn't help somebody like me who's at a place to kinda-sorta be able to play some more-difficult pieces but not able to play many, many others.

FYI (or who cares?), I can handle most of the chordal structures, octave leaps, and so forth, but not the high velocities and very complex or odd rhythmic patterns of many tough pieces.  I certainly do not have the "virtuosic level technical facility needed" for real level 10 pieces (though I play Brahms' second rhapsody of Op. 79 fairly well - and almost up to tempo - and that's half one of their example level 10 pieces).

Thank you both for responding,
Bruce

[ongaku_oniko]

what is this difficulty rating you're talking about?

[stevebob]

what is this difficulty rating you're talking about?

I think the comments apply to any scale or ranking system of repertoire by technical difficulty, really.  The one in my link to the Sheet Music Plus site is just one example; it's probably intended to benefit Americans primarily, as we have no national board that establishes official criteria, standards, requirements, "grades," etc. for music instruction or curricula.

[ongaku_oniko]

Well then, for example, RCME distinguishes pieces...

military polonaise would go in at lvl 10


"easy" chopin etudes, fantasie-impromptu, etc are ARCT

islamey, liszt sonata in b minor, gaspard de la nuit are Licentiate.