This book examines the challenges and delights of Mozart's solo piano works. All the sonatas, fantasies, rondi, as well as the most important variation sets and assorted pieces, are included. No other publication deals with this repertoire in such detail. The author guides us through each composition addressing their specific aspects and problems, offering practical advice and interesting alternatives as well as historical background and formal analysis when relevant to interpretation. Clear references to the numbered bars discuss text interpretation, emotion, association, dynamics, articulation, phrasing, tempo, rhythm, pedalling and technical problems. Renditions of all notated ornaments and possibilities for improvised ornaments are given in separate sections, as well as listening suggestions.
Mozart's emergence as a mature artist coincides with the rise to prominence of the piano, an instrument that came alive under his fingers and served as medium for many of his finest compositions. In Mozart's Piano Music, William Kinderman reconsiders common assumptions about Mozart's life and art while offering comprehensive and incisive commentary on the solo music and concertos. After placing Mozart's pianistic legacy in its larger biographical and cultural context, Kinderman addresses the lively gestural and structural aspects of Mozart's musical language and explores the nature of his creative process. Incorporating the most recent research throughout this encompassing study, Kinderman expertly surveys each of the major genres of the keyboard music, including the four-hand and two-piano works. Beyond examining issues such as Mozart's earliest childhood compositions, his musical rhetoric and expression, the social context of his Viennese concertos, and affinities between his piano works and operas, Kinderman's main emphasis falls on detailed discussion of selected individual compositions.
A beautifully illustrated, totally engrossing celebration of the piano, and the composers and performers who have made it their own. With honed sensitivity and unquestioned expertise, Stuart Isacoff—pianist, critic, teacher, and author of Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization—unfolds the ongoing history and evolution of the piano and all its myriad wonders: how its very sound provides the basis for emotional expression and individual style, and why it has so powerfully entertained generation upon generation of listeners. He illuminates the groundbreaking music of Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Schumann, and Debussy. He analyzes the breathtaking techniques of Glenn Gould, Oscar Peterson, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Arthur Rubinstein, and Van Cliburn, and he gives musicians including Alfred Brendel, Murray Perahia, Menahem Pressler, and Vladimir Horowitz the opportunity to discuss their approaches. Isacoff delineates how classical music and jazz influenced each other as the uniquely American art form progressed from ragtime, novelty, stride, boogie, bebop, and beyond, through Scott Joplin, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Cecil Taylor, and Bill Charlap. A Natural History of the Piano distills a lifetime of research and passion into one brilliant narrative. We witness Mozart unveiling his monumental concertos in Vienna’s coffeehouses, using a special piano with one keyboard for the hands and another for the feet; European virtuoso Henri Herz entertaining rowdy miners during the California gold rush; Beethoven at his piano, conjuring healing angels to console a grieving mother who had lost her child; Liszt fainting in the arms of a page turner to spark an entire hall into hysterics. Here is the instrument in all its complexity and beauty. We learn of the incredible craftsmanship of a modern Steinway, the peculiarity of specialty pianos built for the Victorian household, the continuing innovation in keyboards including electronic ones. And most of all, we hear the music of the masters, from centuries ago and in our own age, brilliantly evoked and as marvelous as its most recent performance. With this wide-ranging volume, Isacoff gives us a must-have for music lovers, pianists, and the armchair musician.
Mozart's piano sonatas are among the most familiar of his works and stand alongside those of Haydn and Beethoven as staples of the pianist's repertoire. In this study, John Irving looks at a wide selection of contextual situations for Mozart's sonatas, focusing on the variety of ways in which they assume identities and achieve meanings. In particular, the book seeks to establish the provisionality of the sonatas' notated texts, suggesting that the texts are not so much identifiers as possibilities and that their identity resides in the usage. Close attention is paid to reception matters, analytical approaches, organology, the role of autograph manuscripts, early editions and editors, and aspects of historical performance practice - all of which go beyond the texts in opening windows onto Mozart's sonatas. Treating the sonatas collectively as a repertoire, rather than as individual works, the book surveys broad thematic issues such as the role of historical writing about music in defining a generic space for Mozart's sonatas, their construction within pedagogical traditions, the significance of sound as opposed to sight in these works (and in particular their sound on fortepianos of the later eighteenth-century) , and the creative role of the performer in their representation beyond the frame of the text. Drawing together and synthesizing this wealth of material, Irving provides an invaluable reference source for those already familiar with this repertoire.
This collection provides an excellent introduction to Mozart's easiest works. Selections include short dances such as the popular "Minuet in F Major," easier sonata movements and arrangements of familiar opera arias. The short biography and notes on each piece will be appreciated by students new to the study of Mozart's music.
Lesson Book 1 is geared for pre-reading students. Concepts taught are: * How to sit at the piano * Correct hand position * High and low * Loud and soft (forte and piano) * Keyboard topography * Bar line and measure, Quarter, half, whole notes and rests * Repeat signs The first pieces in the book are played on the black keys. Later in the book, C D E for the RH and C B A for the LH (Middle C position) are taught with letter notes (the name of the note is written inside the note head).
Musicians have long treasured the Mozart sonatas for their symmetry and perfection. This volume presents single movements as well as complete sonatas (K. 282, 283, 545 and 570) for study by the advancing pianist. The sonatas provide ample opportunity for developing control, technical facility, a singing style, and balance and voicing. The preface gives Dr. Hinson's helpful suggestions on pedaling, ornamentation, articulation and dynamics, as well as a suggested order of study. Careful editing allows the teacher and student to make informed choices in interpreting these masterpieces.
Now regarded by many in the music world as a classic, Hutchings' study of Mozart's piano concertos provides a clear approach, supported by numerous musical illustrations and biographical notes, to each work.
A graded collection of selected pieces in the easy-to-intermediate levels. Plus arrangements of best-loved themes from his piano concertos, operas, and orchestral works.
