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One of the textbooks for my sightreading course is Volume 1 of the Beethoven Sonatas.

That's right. We're sightreading in class the first 16 Beethoven sonatas this semester (one every week).




On Friday of this week we have to submit to the teacher a list of the sonata movements that we've already studied - there are 6 students in the class. Then each week, 3 or 4 students are assigned to practice a sonata that they have not played before - 1 student for each movement - and they are the week's "leaders". Then, after the end of the week, when we have our class, they 'lead' while the other students in the class sight-read / sight-play along.


(Since this week is the first week, we just have to practice Hanon in 12 Major keys without watching our hands)

Sounds like a piece of pie!!

A very delicious, yet hard to eat piece of pie.

What class is this?

Impressive, yes, but wouldn't something less well-known be more appropriate for a sightreading course? I would hope that most students in such a course would have already at least read through most of the Beethoven sonatas, as well as having heard performances of many of them.

Next semester: two Chopin etudes each week.

Best wishes,
Matthew

Piano Sight-Reading. It's a required 2-semester course for all freshman piano majors, and optional for other music students.


You'd be surprised. Besides, even if most of us have heard, say, Op. 2 No. 3, that doesn't necessarily mean that we know it well enough that we already know what's coming in every measure when we play through it. (I sure don't... I'd say I'm *somewhat* familiar with maybe 5 or 6 of these sonatas, and have only actually played 2 of them.)

That sounds like a fun class Sam. I've done that for the fun of it with Haydn Sonatas. Beethoven can be a different ball of wax though. The Op. 22 (no. 11 in B-flat is pretty tricky).


John

Yummy but hard.

In a piano literature class we each took turns sightreading Preludes and Fugues of Bach once. That wasn't too much fun.

I'd hate to be the professor teaching that class every year...

She would leave the door open and would sneak in and out of the studio taking phone calls or socializing in the halls. So she probably didn't suffer through too much of it.

What institution do you go to?

I'm a student at the University of Michigan.

are music students at the college level expected to read through Beethoven's sonatas and Bach's preludes and fugues at sight??

I've never heard of that classs before. University of Michigan must be rather unique in offering it. Why not just spend a semester learning one sonata really well? Strange. Is Piano Sightreading equivalent to Musicianship? I saw that class at one college.

Oh, c'mon, guys: sight-reading skills are part of the training of any serious student of piano. There's no better way to develop the skill than do it. That this teacher chooses Beethoven Sonatas or something else is interesting, but developing sight-reading skills has nothing to do with "learning one sonata really well"!

Regards,

This is in addition to studio lessons - i.e. students are still required to learn one sonata really well, and also maybe some Bach, and maybe some Chopin... + all of the sight-reading practice for this course.

I recall reading an interview of John Browning and he stated he would assign a new sonata every week to his students. They were required to play it the following week from memory. He admitted it was difficult, but his students eventually found a way to accomplish this task.

He didn't mention which sonatas, but based on the context of the interview, I would imagine they were Mozart, Haydn, or Beethoven sonatas.