Twelve Sonatas make piano history.
Written just after the invention of the piano, these twelve pieces are the oldest piano sheet music in the world.
They were composed by Lodovico Giustini (1685-1743), an Italian organist, composer and harpsichord player who came from a long lineage of accomplished musicians dating back to the early 17th century.
It is very likely that Giustini was in contact with Bartolomeo Cristofori, the inventor of the piano, who …
Chopin prescribes the pedal very precisely.
In addition to the information present in detail in his manuscripts, there are also testimonies, collected among others by musicologist Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger in his book "Chopin seen by his students", which shows the indications that Chopin gave to his students also on the use of the pedal in his music.
From these indications it is evident that Chopin changed the use of …
Curwen hand signs often go along with solfa scale, like a sign language. The reason these are useful is that it provides a movement to go along with the pitch that we're singing. Moving our bodies at the same time as singing, and thinking and using our voices gives us another way to understand what we're doing. It engages another part of our brains, which means that we work more …
In 1819 Beethoven began to compose three Piano Sonatas. The three works were completed respectively in 1820, 1822 and 1823 and were published separately by the publisher Schlesinger of Berlin. However, the separate publication and the attribution of three opus numbers does not exclude - the critics are convinced of this - that it is a triptych, three poems that mutually complement each other.
And since Beethoven was working on the …
One of the technical discoveries of romantic pianism is the so-called "Cantabile with both hands". This means that the main melodic line, being played in the central part of the keyboard, is obtained by alternating the two hands, and often by alternating the thumbs.
A typical example of this procedure, which will be intensely exploited, is Liszt's famous Liebestraum N. 3.
The difficulty of correctly performing this type of cantabile is that the …