Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Keith Snell ... Baroque, Classical, Romantic book

I just got the book "Essential Piano Repertoire of the 17th, 18th, & 19th Centuries Level 1 (Neil A Kjos Piano Library Book & CD, Level One) (Paperback)" off amazon to give me some classical tunes to practice with for my level 1 training...is anyone familiar with this series and would have any feedback?

mallard - I'm using the book "Essential Keyboard Repertoire, Vol. 1" from Alfred, which I would imagine probably has some (maybe a lot) of pieces in common. However, the Keith Snell series has been discussed here in several threads (always positively I think), especially by Rich (I forget his screen name) who might check in here soon - in the meantime you might want to try a search.

Regards, JF

Mallard,

I use the Keith Snell Piano Repertoire series (the 3 volume per level series), and am currently between levels 4 & 5. I like the fact that the pieces are very close in difficulty at each level. The Essential series is nice, but it is missing some of the more interesting 20th century pieces by Bartok, Kabalevsky, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, etc.

Rich

Yes, that's him - Rich is DragonPianoPlayer

Ok, I'll try to see if I can find those but selection is limited on Amazon.

The local music store doesnt carry stuff like that. I wanted to practice with some music from these eras instead of childrens music for a change (not that theres anything wrong with learning from the latter) and also it would be interesting hearing the difference in style between medieval, baroque, classical, romantic and 20th century.

I use these books and I enjoy them. There's a Schubert Waltz in Level Four that I still love to play.

We also use the Snell Theory books.

Here is the Romantic and 20th century level one book:

http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Reperto...mp;s=books&qid=1244223402&sr=1-2

or here from sheetmusicplus:

http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title...ire-Romantic-20th-Century-Level-1/291018

Since you already have the Essential Piano Repertoire book for level 1, I would probably keep working through just that book. For future levels, you might find that it is nice to have the modern pieces to work through.

Rich

I got this in the mail yesterday and thought "How many variations can there be of the song Minuet?"

hehe...most of the songs are titled Minuet...I didnt know it was "A" minuet

Minuet is a style of dance. It has the triple meter of a waltz, but is performed with movements based on early ballet. With some of these pieces (especially as you reach levels 3 -4 and up), it helps to look for videos of someone performing various versions of the dances.

Rich

i know what youre talking about...when I was learning "cafe vienna" from the alfreds book, it just sounded like a waltz and I could envision the dance to it.

Funny enough there did only used to be four. http://www.carolsethnicdance.com/france.php