Piano literature listed by technique

[Bob]

I need a list, as complete as possible, of real piano repertoire pieces. 

The list should be organized according to technique and difficulty.

For example,  pieces that use octaves -- simple to difficult.


Does anyone know where I can get my hands on this?  I'm sure someone has created this before.


I want to be able to cover all areas of technique with literature.  I want say five pieces at a time that will cover the major areas of piano technique.  I can simply plug in a new piece that covers a certain technique when I'm finished with that piece.

I need this for myself and for my students.


mirrored at
https://www.pianoworld.com/ubb/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/topic/27/306.html

[abell88]

You might find this useful:

https://www.unmethoders.com

It was referred to in a thread entitled Teaching Beginners,

https://www.pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,8246.0.html

[xvimbi]

There are several collections of etudes that try to cover what you have in mind, e.g. Burgmueller, but none of them is really complete (AFAIK.) I personally prefer a different approach, namely, a gradual introduction into the works of a given composer or era. Alfred has a series that covers all of the main composers. The titles are "Bach - An introduction to his keyboard works" or "Grieg - An introduction to his piano works" and the like. This way, you learn about the performance practices (ornaments, pedalling, touch, interpretation, etc.), rather than purely technical aspects. Of course, they do cover all technical aspects as well, but it's not really emphasized that way. It's great to work on one or two pieces by one composer, then move on to another one, and so on. The only downside is that the editors did not always do a great job, but if your background is strong, you'd be able to catch those spots right away. In the end, you've covered all technical aspects, all periods and have a thorough understanding of music from Baroque to Modern.

[bernhard]

I need a list, as complete as possible, of real piano repertoire pieces. 

The list should be organized according to technique and difficulty.

For example,  pieces that use octaves -- simple to difficult.


Does anyone know where I can get my hands on this?  I'm sure someone has created this before.


I want to be able to cover all areas of technique with literature.  I want say five pieces at a time that will cover the major areas of piano technique.  I can simply plug in a new piece that covers a certain technique when I'm finished with that piece.

I need this for myself and for my students.


mirrored at
https://www.pianoworld.com/ubb/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/topic/27/306.html

I think you are approaching this problem upside down. 

Instead of looking for real repertory pieces that allow you to master a certain technique, you should approach it by mastering the techniques that allow you to play real repertory pieces.

What xvimbi just said is very true: There is no such a list. And the reason is simple. A real repertory piece will not be restricted to one or even  two or three major techniques. A real worthwhile musically piece will use several different techniques – in fact whatever technique is necessary to bring about the music.

Technical studies, of course are a different matter altogether. They will isolate and repeat endlessly a single element.

Take a piece like Schumann’s “Solitary flowers” from “Waldscenen”. How one would classify it technically?

1.   It has octaves  (on a couple of bars).
2.   It has thirds.
3.   In fact it has all sorts of intervals.
4.   It has arpeggios.
5.   It has arpeggios in contrary motion.
6.   It has skips in the left hand
7.   It is written in 3 voices (mostly), and their relative contribution has to be precisely conveyed (arguably  the greatest problem in this piece).
8.   It has a variety of dynamic directions.
9.   It presents memory challenges
10.   It is an excellent piece to learn how to use the pedal.
11.   It is an excellent piece to learn about phrasing and articulation.
12.   It is an excellent piece to investigate the issues of comfort (Schumann is often uncomfortable until you find just the right set of movement patterns/fingerings, and then it becomes very easy), so a student could learn a lot about fingering, for instance from investigating this piece.
13.   It is an excellent piece to investigate harmonic analysis, motif analysis and part writing.
14.   Etc.


And this is true for every superior piece I can think of.

So rather than put the technique ahead of the piece, try the opposite approach.

1.   Which piece do I truly love?
2.   How would I like it to sound?
3.   How can I produce this particular rendition I have in mind? (The investigation necessary to answer this question will expand your technique in a way you never thought possible).
4.   How can I ingrain the possibilities I discovered in 3 above, so that they become second nature and part of my unconscious repertory of techniques, in other words, how can I build a musical intuition.
5.   Done with piece no. 1? Then move on to piece no. 2. (or work on them in parallel).
6.   After a couple of years of this approach you will have more technique than you know what to do with, plus a sizeable repertory.

You could phrase the same question in perhaps a different way: Are there any pieces that if mastered will get me all the technique I will ever need to play whatever I want? Yes. Master these 104 pieces and you will be able to tackle anything :

Bach’s 48 preludes and fugues of the WTC
Beethoven’s 32 Sonatas
Chopin’s 24 etudes op. 10 and op. 25.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[bernhard]

You might find this useful:

https://www.unmethoders.com

It was referred to in a thread entitled Teaching Beginners,

https://www.pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,8246.0.html

The unmethod seems really interesting.

[bernhard]

I personally prefer a different approach, namely, a gradual introduction into the works of a given composer or era. Alfred has a series that covers all of the main composers. The titles are "Bach - An introduction to his keyboard works" or "Grieg - An introduction to his piano works" and the like. This way, you learn about the performance practices (ornaments, pedalling, touch, interpretation, etc.), rather than purely technical aspects. Of course, they do cover all technical aspects as well, but it's not really emphasized that way. It's great to work on one or two pieces by one composer, then move on to another one, and so on. The only downside is that the editors did not always do a great job, but if your background is strong, you'd be able to catch those spots right away. In the end, you've covered all technical aspects, all periods and have a thorough understanding of music from Baroque to Modern.

This is also a great idea. The ABRSM has a series of books (by now there maybe over 100 of them) called “Easier Piano Pieces”, each book dedicated to a different composer. One of the advantages (in my view) or this series, is that most of the composers are obscure/neglected and yet all the pieces are excellent (and the editorial work is superb). Check them here (there are sample pages for free):

https://www.abrsmpub.co.uk/publications.html
(Books from the Easier Piano Pieces series have the code EPP).

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[m1469]

Please forgive but my musically ravenous alter ego, m1469, is taking me over...


Bernhard wrote :

Instead of looking for real repertory pieces that allow you to master a certain technique, you should approach it by mastering the techniques that allow you to play real repertory pieces.

This seems like an argument for technical exercises.

You could phrase the same question in perhaps a different way: Are there any pieces that if mastered will get me all the technique I will ever need to play whatever I want? Yes. Master these 104 pieces  and you will be able to tackle anything :

Bach’s 48 preludes and fugues of the WTC
Beethoven’s 32 Sonatas
Chopin’s 24 etudes op. 10 and op. 25.

This is fine for an intermediate student moving into advanced, but Bernhard you have said before that it only takes 2 to 3 years for a complete beginner student to learn most of the technique there is.  So that makes me think that there is some sort of list of technical skills that can be checked off as you go along (which is where a thread that I started stems from).  So why not work from the standpoint of finding pieces within the repertory that address the issues?  I am confused now 


m1469

[bernhard]

This seems like an argument for technical exercises.

I agree it might be interpreted this way. But it is actually an argument against creating analytical edifices in regards to technique.

In a similar post you asked about a “list” of techniques. I believe this to be a mistaken approach, in the sense that it is not very useful.

Consider the most basic definition of “technique”: a way of doing things.

Accepting this definition immediately opens a huge can of worms. For instance:

1.   Everyone has his own way of doing things. Usually trying to imitate someone else’s way of doing things in all of its minutiae will either not be possible, or will produce very different results from what one may have expected.

2.   There are many different ways of doing the same thing, and some are better than others.

3.   The way of doing something always depends on context. There is no “absolute” best way of doing some “isolated” action. The moment that “isolated” action is put on context it will have to be modified to accommodate to the context.

4.   The “something” one must develop a way of doing is usually a very large indeed “something” probably encompassing the whole universe. Its breakdown into steps and so on is simply a delusion that is useful for the purposes of discussion but that has little bearing once one moves form theoretical discussion to experiential reality. I consider it as a ladder: useful to get me to the next level, but once I am securely there it can be discarded.

Now let us consider this in the context of music and technical exercises.

1.   In order to master a certain “way of doing things” you must want to do the thing in the first place. So to start from technique, that is: “I have to learn the technique for playing octaves, tell me pieces that have octaves” is to put the cart before the horse. The reason to learn a piece should not be to master the technique of octaves (assuming for the sake of discussion that such a thing exists). Rather, we should want to figure out how to play octaves because the piece we are dying to play happens to have some.

2.   Therefore, you may say at this point, I am advocating doing technical exercises involving octaves as a pre-requisite to tackling the piece that has them. Not at all. And for two very simple reasons:

i.   Working on the piece in the correct way will result in your acquisition of whatever technique the piece itself requires.

ii.   Octaves (as an example) are not all played the same way. The octaves in Schumann’s “Solitary flowers” have to be played in a different way (that is with a different “technique”) from the octaves in Chopin’s "Military Polonaise". For starters, in Schumann the notes in the octaves belong to different voices.

iii.   A technical exercise does not simply teach you to play octaves without a context. The exercise provides its own context, and it is a dreary unmusical context. In fact play enough technical exercises and you will develop musical sloppiness because you will not be made aware of the musical context, only of the physical context.

So as you can see, the common saying that “technique and musicality cannot be separated” is not jus a platitude. There are some very cogent arguments supporting it.

This is fine for an intermediate student moving into advanced, but Bernhard you have said before that it only takes 2 to 3 years for a complete beginner student to learn most of the technique there is.

Any of these 104 pieces can be learned by beginners if they are outlined, simplified, etc. But again this would be to start at the wrong end of the stick.

Going this way means that you are letting “technique” (or even worse a misguided idea of what technique actually is) to guide your choice of repertory (either for you or for your students). Repertory should be chosen on a single criterion: How much do I love this piece.

Now of course, a complete beginner may love Rach 3 to bits, but that is not a good choice. So you must find an “easy” piece that they love equally. Someone who says to you, “Well, I only love Rach3, no other piece will do” has no real love for music, rather s/he has a love for showing off. Send him/her on her/her way.

As a teacher I think of myself as someone who has a certain knowhow who may help a true lover of music to engage in a complex activity that will fulfil that love of music. They may want to learn Rach 3, but if I give them a CD with 70 pieces of musically superior grade 1 pieces, I expect them to come back with at least 3 pieces that they would love to play. If they cannot see the musical beauty in any of these 70 pieces, then there is something very wrong with their musicality and the course of action is not piano technique but musical appreciation. You must question their motives to learn the piano.

So it is only when a student has chosen a piece they love (and this is truly the only criterion) that the issue of technique will arise. Yes, I love this piece, but how can I possibly move my body in a way that will result in a musically satisfying rendition of it? This is a technical question and will have to be addressed in purely technical terms.

There is a hidden subject in this question, which should also be addressed: what is a musically satisfying rendition of a piece (and like technique, there are no standard answers, the answer is always specific to the particular piece/passage one is playing). Beginners – in musical as well as technical matters – usually play in either too dry and mechanical way, or too sentimental and cheesy way.

And this is the beauty of working in a piece one loves: it covers everything. By the time you are “finished” with it (if you can ever be finished with a piece of music that you love, that is) you will have covered so much technique and  musicality, that your next piece will come much faster, not because you acquired the technique and the musicality, but because you were shown how to acquire technique and musicality

You see, it is not the technical principles, or the musicality that you will have learned (each piece will always have its own requisites in this respect). What you will have learned is a procedure to tackle technical and musical problems.

It is this procedure – or set of procedures -  that can be mapped, not technique or musicality. For instance, one such procedure is repeated note-groups. This particular procedure (when applicable) will conquer any technical and memory difficulties in the shortest possible time (it may take a long time, but it will be less time than any other procedure).

So that makes me think that there is some sort of list of technical skills that can be checked off as you go along (which is where a thread that I started stems from).  So why not work from the standpoint of finding pieces within the repertory that address the issues?  I am confused now

If you are not confused it is because you are not thinking clearly.

Confusion is good. Given we really know nothing about anything, there is nothing worse that certainty. Confusion keeps us on our toes. Everything is ultimately a tentative explanation.

I am completely sure and certain of that.

The main problem with a list of technical skills is that everyone has their favourite way of looking at it. The subject can be organised in an infinite number of ways.

If you make a comparison between how Liszt did it, how the traditional pedagogues did it (Hanon, Czerny &co.), how Fink does it and how Sandor does it, you will realise that any author who wrote about piano technique in isolation has it own list of “technical” musts.

They are all missing the point. Consider the following Doctoral project in Physics: To weight and measure every stone on the Department of Physics car park. Does this make any sense? A student coming up with such a project shows no real understanding of what physics is all about. He may even argue: “What is wrong with it? It relates to the “physical” word – stones. It involves measurement and observation, and I will make a complete statistical analysis of the data I collect. I will then provide a hypothesis to explain the results.”

What is wrong with this project is exactly what is wrong with starting with technique. In science (and you would be surprised how many scientist do not realise this – as so many pianists do not realise the parallel situation with technique) one does not start by collecting data in order to arrive at a theory that will explain the data collected. In science one must always start with a problem. One then proceeds to formulate an explanation, and only then one starts collecting data to disprove the explanation. So the data collection is guided and limited by the problem/hypothesis. To start with the data is to turn the situation on its head. The project is unfeasible because ultimately there is no “problem” that requires the weighing of stones for its solution – which is not to say that such a problem could not be formulated.

Likewise one does not start from technique and the formulation of technical schemes. One starts with a piece, and it is the piece that will guide and limit the search for technical solutions.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[m1469]

Bernhard wrote :

Instead of looking for real repertory pieces that allow you to master a certain technique, you should approach it by mastering the techniques that allow you to play real repertory pieces.

Okay, okay.

(For pretends)  My highest current dream for my cooking-self is to make a delicious omelete (sorry to those I have already bored to death with this).  BUT!, it is far too advanced a repertory for my present cooking-self, so with a teacher we choose to first try scrambling some eggs to prepare for such a feat as a delicious omelete.  During the process I delightedly learn how to whip some eggs, amongst other things and after a few tries, I have managed to create the most delicious scrambled eggs ever.  NOW, I am ready to make an omelete because scrambling eggs has helped to prepare me.   So in the end, I have put into my cooking repertoire both scrambled eggs AND omelete.

Now, I do not choose apathetically to cook up an omelete just because I want to learn how to whip up some eggs.  AND I do not go out and purchase a book dedicated solely to whipping up eggs which never get used for anything and are without a context beyond whipping eggs... becuase... this is boring?

Now one might ask, "but what if I love and am passionate about just whipping eggs?" 

"Well", another answers, "that is fine but this knowledge will never serve you beyond itself unless your level of being grows (he he) and you find the desire to create a culinary delights with your egg-whipping knowledge.  So, why not give such technical desires a context by picking out and creating yummy foods?"

In the end, it is more effective to choose to make an omelete because my taste buds dream of eating such a delight (not just because I want to learn how to whip eggs) and in the process I am delighted to learn about the techniques involved. 

One never learns a technique that in essence they do not desire to learn, because one only picks pieces that are appealing to the individual.  And while an individual may become stuck and drawn to the same type of piece, it is the teacher's responsibility to help the starving student grow in tastes and appreciation for other masterful works, thereby providing a context to learn more advanced techniques and thereby providing the desire to learn them (?).  In the end, a one person will never learn everything there is to know about music and the piano, so why set out on that course as a goal in and of itself (right?) ?  Why not simply set out to learn those pieces that are attractive and in the process learn about the wonders of the instrument and maintaining a lovely repertoire which enables an individual to sit down and enjoy a good and hearty musical meal.

Hmmm, well maybe something like that?


m1469

[Torp]

In the end, it is more effective to choose to make an omelete because my taste buds dream of eating such a delight (not just because I want to learn how to whip eggs) and in the process I am delighted to learn about the techniques involved.

I think this sums it up very well.  Though I must admit, I seem to have an overwhelming craving for breakfast right now! 

Jef

[bernhard]

Bernhard wrote :


Okay, okay.

(For pretends)  My highest current dream for my cooking-self is to make a delicious omelete (sorry to those I have already bored to death with this).  BUT!, it is far too advanced a repertory for my present cooking-self, so with a teacher we choose to first try scrambling some eggs to prepare for such a feat as a delicious omelete.  During the process I delightedly learn how to whip some eggs, amongst other things and after a few tries, I have managed to create the most delicious scrambled eggs ever.  NOW, I am ready to make an omelete because scrambling eggs has helped to prepare me.   So in the end, I have put into my cooking repertoire both scrambled eggs AND omelete.

Now, I do not choose apathetically to cook up an omelete just because I want to learn how to whip up some eggs.  AND I do not go out and purchase a book dedicated solely to whipping up eggs which never get used for anything and are without a context beyond whipping eggs... becuase... this is boring?

Now one might ask, "but what if I love and am passionate about just whipping eggs?" 

"Well", another answers, "that is fine but this knowledge will never serve you beyond itself unless your level of being grows (he he) and you find the desire to create a culinary delights with your egg-whipping knowledge.  So, why not give such technical desires a context by picking out and creating yummy foods?"

In the end, it is more effective to choose to make an omelete because my taste buds dream of eating such a delight (not just because I want to learn how to whip eggs) and in the process I am delighted to learn about the techniques involved. 

One never learns a technique that in essence they do not desire to learn, because one only picks pieces that are appealing to the individual.  And while an individual may become stuck and drawn to the same type of piece, it is the teacher's responsibility to help the starving student grow in tastes and appreciation for other masterful works, thereby providing a context to learn more advanced techniques and thereby providing the desire to learn them (?).  In the end, a one person will never learn everything there is to know about music and the piano, so why set out on that course as a goal in and of itself (right?) ?  Why not simply set out to learn those pieces that are attractive and in the process learn about the wonders of the instrument and maintaining a lovely repertoire which enables an individual to sit down and enjoy a good and hearty musical meal.

Hmmm, well maybe something like that?


m1469

Exactly!

(Runs to the kitchen to make some scrambled eggs).

By the way, reply #9  in this thread lists the way Fink. Sandor and Lizst organise technique:

https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,2998.msg26268.html#msg26268

Best wishes,
Bernhard

[key of c]

Does anyone else have a shorter version on their take about this?
When learning a sport there are basics you learn before you learn the entire game.
I still think a list of needed technique would be very helpful and accompanying music
that would help learn specific techniques.
It seems to me the same reason we learn scales ; not because we love them, but to learn the fingering of the keys.
No one wants to make a CD out of scales, but the scales certainly help in the music one desires to play....
anyone else out there?