Grades refer to the perceived difficulty of a piece of music.
Music educational organisations use them as a way to organise the huge repertory in progressive order of difficulty.
The are many flaws with the idea of grading music: difficulty is very subjective (what I may find easy you may find difficult and vice-versa), it depend on one’s level (a grade 1 piece may seem very difficult to a beginner while a grade 8 piece may seem elementary to a concert pianist), and there are many different kinds of difficulty (a Bach fugue is difficult for completely different reasons that a Liszt Etude Is difficult, for instance).
As a consequence always take any grade attached to a piece with a large, very large pinch of salt.
These structural problems are reflected in the fact that different Music organisations frequently grade the same piece differently.
Personally I am most familiar with the ABRSM (Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music) in the UK, and you can have a look here to see what they have in their syllabus for each grade.
https://www.abrsm.org/ The ABRSM grades pieces from 1 – 8:
Grade 1 – early elementary – Grade 2 – elementary – Grade 3 – late elementary
Grade 4 - early intermediate – Grade 5 – late intermediary
Grade 6 –early advanced – Grade 7 – advanced – grade8 – late advanced.
Grade 8 does not even touch the virtuoso repertory (e.g. Chopin and Liszt etudes), so most of the standard repertory of a concert pianist will be well beyond the grades.
Some American systems have grades 1 – 10.
Have a look here, for more discussions on this subject:
https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,4297.msg39910.html#msg39910https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,1947.msg15391.html#msg15391https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,4205.msg38841.html#msg38841Personally I do not attach any importance to grades.
Best wishes,
Bernhard.
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