Piano4t Classical
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All Students preparing for Grade exams are recommended to use the Hofnotes on-line training pages to practise for the aural tests. 

At higher grades  you must be able to discuss with the examiner musical features such as texture, form, style, and period of a piece of music.  My own  web pages to help with these parts of the test at Grade 5+ and at GCSE are available here!

 

 

 

 

 

Classical period  1730 - 1820

Structural clarity was sought in all fields of art, and in music this meant moving away from Baroque polyphony and towards melody with harmony.

Social factors

The economics of music changed, too.  Composers wrote for patrons and used local musicians known to the families concerned.  Parts had to become simpler - with occasional pieces for virtuosi on particular instruments.

Notation

Melody lines were notated in increasing detail with phrasing and dynamics.

Movements were unified with distinctive moods and rhythms or tempo.

The Baroque habit of making each movement devoted to a single "affect" or emotion faded away. Form as we know it was born - contrasts between sections, key changes, stridently rhythmic themes next to lyrical ones...

Keyboard instruments were the fortepiano....

 

They sounded like........

 

Try to play a movement from a sonata by one of these great classical composers for the piano:

    Clementi

    Haydn

    Mozart

    Beethoven

    Schubert - particularly his Sonata for the Young

    Czerny and Kuhlau are less well known but have great things to offer at grade 3 level and beyond