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!

The Partita

Like the Suite, a Partita is made up of a number of movements but they are less like dances.  Titles were mainly:

• caprice
• allegro
• rondeau
• fugue

Composers work with many other different styles, not all of which are so easily recognisable:

Scherzo

Literally 'a joke', is usually in quick tempo and light hearted, sometimes with a quieter Trio section.  Several examples in symphonies and string quartets.  Beethoven was the real inventor of the scherzo and the one in his  6th Symphony is typical - triple metre, quite rough and rustic in style.

Schubert's Two Scherzi for piano solo include the lovely,famous B^{b S}Scherzo, very playable at about Grade 5 level.

Scherzo from Schubert's Piano Quintet The Trout

Capriccio

Literally fancy or whimsical; a fairly light, quick movement, quite free in form.

Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol

Fantasia

Not defining a rigid form, Fantasia's quite often consist of a theme with free variations, even feeling improvisational in character, especially in the organ works of JS Bach and Sweelinck.  In the 19th century Chopin, Schumann and others produced short 'mood' pieces under the name of Fantasias (eg Schumann's FantasieStücke).

A recently composed ending for Mozart's D Minor Fantasia K397; the exploratory arpeggios heard here often define the style

Arabesque

A showy movement, quite free in form.

Burgmuller's Arabesque from the Opus 100 Studies

Prelude

Quite free, sometimes preoccupied with working out a short figure from the start

Nocturne

A Romantic speciality, often in ternary form.

Last updated on: 03/01/2012