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PS88 if you really want 53 no 4 I'll go to the other suggestions of zrtf90.
They are all challenging to me.

Let me know what you guys decide, then I'll update the list

I'll do opus 38 number 4, andante in A major. Thanks for the suggestion, Richard.

Alright I'm dedicated to 53 #4 then. Now if you have suggestions on managing the huge chords in the first few measures I'd appreciate the creativity.

Book 1, op. 19b (1829–1830)
No. 1 Andante con moto in E major - Dipsy
No. 2 Andante espressivo in A minor - ragnhildK
No. 3 Molto allegro e vivace in A major - Evelyn S
No. 4 Moderato in A major - Devrie
No. 5 Poco agitato in F-sharp minor - Ganddalf
No. 6 Andante sostenuto in G minor - Recaredo

Book 2, op. 30 (1833–1834)
No. 1 Andante espressivo in E-flat major - Valencia
No. 2 Allegro di molto in B-flat minor
No. 3 Adagio non troppo in E major - AimeeO
No. 4 Agitato e con fuoco in B minor
No. 5 Andante grazioso in D major - Beric
No. 6 Allegretto tranquillo in F-sharp minor - LimeFriday

Book 3, op. 38 (1836–1837)
No. 1 Con moto in E-flat major
No. 2 Allegro non troppo in C minor - ROSSY
No. 3 Presto e molto vivace in E major
No. 4 Andante in A major - PianoStudent88
No. 5 Agitato in A minor
No. 6 Andante con moto in A-flat major - Sam S

Book 4, op. 53 (1839–1841)
No. 1 Andante con moto in A-flat major - IreneAdler
No. 2 Allegro non troppo in E-flat major
No. 3 Presto agitato in G minor
No. 4 Adagio in F major - WiseBuff
No. 5 Allegro con fuoco in A minor
No. 6 Molto Allegro vivace in A major

Book 5, op. 62 (1842–1844)
No. 1 Andante espressivo in G major
No. 2 Allegro con fuoco in B-flat major
No. 3 Andante maestoso in E minor - ZRTF90
No. 4 Allegro con anima in G major
No. 5 Andante con moto in A minor
No. 6 Allegretto grazioso in A major

Book 6, op. 67 (1843–1845)
No. 1 Andante in E-flat major - timmyab
No. 2 Allegro leggiero in F-sharp minor - dire tonic
No. 3 Andante tranquillo in B-flat major
No. 4 Presto in C major
No. 5 Moderato in B minor - Pavel.K
No. 6 Allegro non troppo in E major

Book 7, op. 85 (1834–1845)
No. 1 Andante espressivo in F major
No. 2 Allegro agitato in A minor - Wayne33yrs
No. 3 Presto in E-flat major
No. 4 Andante sostenuto in D major - Rupak Bhattacharya
No. 5 Allegretto in A major
No. 6 Allegretto con moto in B-flat major

Book 8, op. 102 (1842–1845)
No. 1 Andante un poco agitato in E minor
No. 2 Adagio in D major - FarmGirl
No. 3 Presto in C major -
No. 4 Un poco agitato, ma andante in G minor - LadyChen
No. 5 Allegro vivace in A major
No. 6 Andante in C major - Greener

Come on folks, there's a few seats left

I would like to share ideas on learning these.  Also I'm wondering where people are on the spectrum from "knew my selection already, just need to brush it up" through "challenging, but I've played similar works before" all the way to "this is going to be by far the hardest piece I've ever learned" (that's me).

My approach to learning is first to work out the fingering for the whole piece, and then to focus on small parts at a time.  Sometimes I work back to front.  For this one I think I'll adopt Richard's suggestion of working on four measures at a time (the piece is mostly in six measure phrases, in subunits of two measures, so four will cross six in a curious but not insane way, so it seems as reasonable approach as any).

Actually the very very first step I usually do is play through a piece very slowly, HT, a few times, to get a feel for it.  This may be bad in terms of allowing my fingers to taste the dread Wrong Fingering and Mistaken Notes, but this is what I do.  Someday I'll experiment with starting a piece more cautiously.

The other thing I do at some point, and with this piece I'm doing it at the beginning before working out the fingering, is analyze the piece harmonically and thematically.  (I'm doing analysis exhaustively first on this piece because I'm waiting on an edition I've ordered that claims to have fingering and I want to try that before investing too much time and muscle memory in a home-grown possibly inferior fingering.  Yes, I know, different hands, adapt the fingering, etc etc, but I still like starting with published fingering because I usually find in it some clever solution to some particularly tricky puzzles.)

The thematic analysis has shown me the structural outlines of the piece.  The harmonic analysis has gotten me to look very closely and see where similar melodic phrases are harmonized differently, meaning I have to be sure to come up with separate fingering for each one.  It has also shown me some places where a harmony is continued from beat to beat and thus might affect my choice of pedaling.  But I'm not sure how much the harmonic analysis will affect my playing.  I think I'm going to be challenged just to get the right notes, voice the melody, shape the phrases with the indicated dynamics, and if I'm doing really well make audible the few different articulations that are notated.  Plus do all of that at something resembling Andante Walking Pace rather than Snail's Pace.  (I was heartened by the fact that Barenboim's recording took this at a slower pace than I would have expected, so an artistically reasonable tempo is in reach for me, I hope.)

I haven't mentioned expression, pedaling, articulation, dynamics, rubato, etc. as separate steps because I think I'll be working on all of those as I work through it a few measures at a time. Something I learned from listening to the Satie themed recital is that I need to learn to be MUCH more expressive, even within the limited range of a Satie Gymnopedie. How much more expression will be required in a broad-ranging Romantic (or at least on-the-verge-of-Romantic) Song.

I'd love to hear others' thoughts on learning these pieces.

Thanks for your post PS88, I'm doing the same, but just 2 bars at a time, I started yesterday and am happy with this approach (I really want to do this one properly, taking in all the points you mention, these are the things I need to work on)

And this is definately the hardest piece I've ever learned

My piece is fairly easy. I did not choose it for that reason, but rather because I liked it having listened to them all. There were certainly some I excluded immediately of course though, due to clearly being beyond my capacity.

It has been very good piece to work on for my pace of slow reading. It took me about a week I think to play the piece in its entirety, and to this day I am still reading it from the score, which is new for me.

However, still a lot of work to do in getting the dynamics I will want for final presentation.

Certainly not the toughest I have ever learned. But a new piece for me, and one I am liking while also developing other works. So, quite happy with my choice. Plus, we covered it in the Sonata analysis which was added bonus.

The idea of doing the piece four measures at a time was because it suited the phrasing.

It's not the best method here as it breaks the phrasing against the musical idea.

My approach to this piece would be quite different.

I would start by looking at each measure individually looking for mechanical difficulties like M5 (= M11 & M23) with the idea of absorbing the fingering and mechanics without concern for tempo of any kind and the same where the inner fingers change in the chord progression of M8 (= M14). There are no other areas of concern for me personally but M16-17 might be a rhythmic issue between the hands. There may be some time practising the chords and their changes HS if they're unfamiliar or awkward, the rest is memorising and practising nice and slow.

I would either leave M1-3 and M27-30 to the end or work them up while doing my M5 and 8 exercises.

When there are no mechanical difficulties left I would start on M4-5, M6-7 and M8-9 separately and put them together when they're fluent.

I'd be watchful of minor changes before taking it up to M15 by about the end of December. Where the measures are close but not exactly identical e.g M7, M13 and M23 I would practise them on separate days early on so as not to cause confusion.

M16-17, M18-19, M20-21 in isolation (like M4-9) before appending M22-23 (watch the changes) and tack on M24-25 by mid to late Jan.

I would start joining M1-15 together in late Jan-early Feb and M16-30 on alternate days (or every two days, maybe).

By late Feb I'd put put both halves together and start two or three recordings a day picking up minor flaws and adding improvements.

I honestly can't see this going out before mid March so I'd take Christmas week off and go easy.

I only learn new stuff Mon-Fri and do maintenance on the weekends. This allows catch-up time if I fall behind schedule anywhere.

That's how I'd do it. Merge the ideas from this with your own preferred approach.

Richard, thank you, I will print out your ideas and look at them in conjunction with the score.


For me, that would be every single beat after the first beat of the piece.

Why do you memorize everything? I wasn't planning to memorize this, because to me that seems like an entire extra level of complexity and stress and effort, especially when I don't have a lot of practice at memorization. Plus I'd like to continue working on memorizing the Clementi Sonatina #4 that I'm working on memorizing (partly as a test case to learn how to memorize), and I'm afraid that trying to memorize two pieces will interfere with each other. What am I missing about the benefits of memorization?

By mecanical difficulty I mean a leap, a trill in weak fingers, changing inner fingers of a chord in relation to the outer fingers, crossing the fourth finger over fifth while holding down second etc.

Measure three might be difficult in RH (Am - E7 - Am) but LH is easy enough. Once RH is sorted there's no mechanical difficulty even though the measure isn't easy to play (until it's memorised! ).





If there's a bit of tricky fingering and it isn't marked in the score, how do you know what fingers to use?

Imagine a five note ascent from D to G, say, ending in a trill. If I play 1-2-3-4-5 I have to try and trill with 4-5. If I play 1-2-1-2-3 I trill with two and three. I could write in the 1 over the third note and give myself yet more information to take in at a glance or I could memorise it!

Memorising means taking a short section and repeating it. Exactly the same process I use to learn to play a piece without memorising it! So why not memorise it? If I memorise it I can practise it on the kitchen worktop when I'm frying an egg or boiling a kettle, on the steering wheel at traffic lights. And when the boss is telling me something really important and I have to look like I'm concentrating on what he's saying I can practise it without even moving my fingers (it grows the neural connexions just the same but without errors).



I work on memorising three to five pieces each day, the pieces change every week to prevent boredom and to give the pieces assimilation time. That means I'm in the process of memorising between 15 and, currently, thirty pieces. I work on small sections of each. I've never played the notes from one piece in the middle of another.

If I wasn't memorising this piece I would still work it the same way.

Among the ones still not taken there are still a few not too difficult pieces, but there are also some virtually unplayable ones definitely out of range for an adult beginner, and very difficult even for very experienced amateurs.

The ones I fear the most are the following:

Op 30/2
Op 38/1
Op 53/3
Op 62/2

Then we have Op 67/2 which is perhaps the hardest of all, but that one is accounted for, and I look forward to listening to it.

The only piece among these I would have considered myself is Op 62/2. But since I have chosen Op 19/5 for myself I stick to that.

Somebody should consider Op 62/1 and Op 62/5. They are very beautiful pieces, the first one being the easier one. Op 62/5 is the most beautiful of Mendelssohn's "Barcarolles".

If they're not all taken are all bets off?

You will have to play any untaken ones Richard Joking! They will get taken lol

Richard, on memorization vs. playing from the score, I use reading the score to remind my fingers where to go. Here's an example from singing: I sing alto in my chorus, and we sang Angels We Have Heard On High (the one with the melismatic Glorias). I'd only ever sung the soprano part before, and I can sing the melody for the Glorias from memory. But I don't know the alto part by heart. I need the music to remind me where to go. Now, there's some learning and practice I've had to do compared to when we first started the piece, because I'm not good at sight-singing. I'm good at reading rhythms at first sight, but I don't have reliable grasp of the pitches to sing until I've heard my part. So I've learned something from practice, in order to know exactly which pitches to sing when looking at the music. But I still need the score, because without the reminder of where to go up and down, I don't remember the part precisely. Piano playing is similar for me.

I have noticed that after I have done memory work, my playing from the score improves; perhaps because the kind of practice I do for memory work gets me to really explore the notes in a way that helps me learn them better. But after the memory work, I find that I can generally still play faster with the score than without, because if I'm able to read the music for reminders of where to go I can go faster and more reliably than when I'm working purely from memory where I get slowed down by the very effort of trying to remember what to play.

That's how most people practise! That's why people play better after a few plays through compared to sight-reading. They remember the notes, oh yes they do, but the score reminds them. All the time.


Exactly!! Learning = Remembering.


Wrong! We remember everything. What you're struggling with is recall!

Remembering = storing.
Recall = retrieving.

Memorising is not remembering - we do that anyway. It's practising recall. That must be slow. And it must be practised.

Finger memory (procedural, motor or muscle memory) is reacting to cues not conscious recall. Practising recall is building cognisant memory. Cognisant memory is less prone to breakdown. You know when you know it. You're less easily thrown. You can pick it up at the next beat or measure. If you leap down to an F instead of an E it can break finger memory because the next note is known in relation to the last but in cognisant memory you know what the next note is and you can recover quickly - often without people noticing.

We remember everything anyway but we must practise recall. Recall uses a different neural pathway. We have to grow that pathway. But once it's there, it's there pretty much for life. And it's solid. You don't forget it.

I've got op67 no1 just about memorized now.I'm still getting the odd memory block though, I hate those things.
Interesting what's just been said about learning to recall.I've always relied too much on finger memory which is fine until it breaks down.Nowadays I practice starting at random points in the score, I find this helps a lot although it's hard work to begin with.
Also I find that newly memorized pieces tend to fall apart not long after they are first memorized.I'm kind of at that stage now with op67 no1 of recognizing where errors are creeping in and using slow practice to clean them up.


Technically, bars 24 and 25 are still giving me some trouble.The high b flats cause problems for hands that can't stretch a comfortable tenth.That's most people I would guess.
It's a lovely piece of music though and like all these songs without words it's great practice in the art of picking out a melody.Something which may well get the better of me, but it wont be for want of trying.

I notice that op85 no1 still hasn't been taken.It's a great piece and not too difficult once you've mastered the polyrhythms.
On the subject of difficulty, this is how Henle rate these pieces.This seems fairly accurate to me.
http://www.henle.com/en/detail/index.html?Title=Songs+without+words_327

It looks as though the G falling on the last beat of the RH of 24/25 should be incorporated into the LH.

I think you might have a few alternatives there.

Yes, that's what I've been doing.It's kind of tricky though because of the awkward left hand figure that follows it and because the G is a melody note so has to be accented.It is coming gradually.