Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Any adults in here learning beginning classical pieces?

I'm thinking of beginning pieces, ala in volume 1&2 of the Suzuki books.

I'm just starting on the book: Bach For Young Pianists A Collection Of Pieces from The Clavier-book of Anna Magdalena Bach, The Clavier-book of W Friedemann Bach, and The First Collection (1766) of Clavier-pieces of C. Ph. E. Bach -prepared by- Warren Thomson. ISBN 0869130013. Albert Edition 452 Urtext.

I've been taking lessons for about 18 months and decided it was time to tackle some Bach so my teacher recommended this (out of print) book.

I've started on the first piece (Air) this week. It's one page and when I first looked at it - I thought "easy peasy'. ahhhhh.....no...... Perhaps simple - but getting the rhythm right is proving tricky. I love the challenge though.

I'm using some beginning classical books for sight reading purposes. Snell series and also I recently got Introduction to Classics to Moderns. There's another volume called Easy Classics to Moderns, but most of them are too difficult for me for sight reading practice, so I'm saving that book for later.

I'm working through Easy Classics to Moderns right now and I love it. There are a number of quite easy pieces to start out with, but enough in there that's more challenging for beginners to keep busy with.

Kris R, I have been meaning to check out the Anna Magdelina book. The Bach pieces in this book are by far my favorites. Do the books you mentioned contain selections that have been arranged/simplified or are they as they were written?

Take a look at Pianist Magazine (available in paper and digital versions). Every issue features about a dozen scores, and a third of them are at the beginner level.

Over the years -- especially when I first began playing piano -- I got a lot of great pieces from Pianist. They do a nice job of spotting for readers interesting and rewarding pieces that even a piano instructor might not know.

The magazine also features demonstration recordings of those pieces by an excellent concert pianist.

CSJ24 - I'm not sure. The booklet cover leads me to believe they might be the originals. Each one has a BWV number and the forward reads: "This book of simple clavier-pieces is an Urtext, original text edition with all editorial markings in brackets.....The number in brackets before each piece refers to the number in the Anna Magdalena Clavier-book, Wilhelm Friedeman Clavier-book or First Collection (1766) of Clavier-pieces of C. PH E Bach."

Maybe someone with more knowledge can help us out??

My guess is that beginning classical pieces would be part of the curriculum of at least half of all adult beginners.

Yet, we don't seem to hear much from them.

Look in the ‘40 piece challenge’: you will find a lot of them and a lot of classical pieces. Additional classical in the Faber thread, piano Marvel thread. They mainly ask questions within those threads,

Doesn't the vast majority of beginners begin with classical pieces? (we need a "headscratch smiley")

Looking around in here, that seems to be far from reality.
In fact, it's a common debate going on in here, whether it's necessary to do any classical training at all in order to learn the instrument.

I gave you multiple places here to look for beginners learning classical; it appears you haven’t looked. You can stick with the same statement, but it is not true. Regardless of the general ‘threads’, beginners here are learning classical.

Generally, classics are basis for all other forms including jazz, pop etc. Many pop stars started their music journey learning classics. Alicia Key’s piece had beethoven sonata movement 1 in her composition…I am always going back to basics or ‘beginners’ classic pieces to work on my reading and sight reading. I do this every timea new pianist magazine comes out…it is just the basics of measuring how far you have come. I wanted to learn jazz, but realized that I had to start with classics. I love the Beatles music and realized, it became a lot easier to learn after classics. If you watch Paul McCartney’s 6 parts Hulu documentary…classics are referenced!

This is one of the reasons I did this post.
Half ways into book 2, there are pieces by Bach appearing. Also from Anna Magdalena's piano practice book.
All pieces up to there are melody and harmony based, which are easy to memorise and visualise.
When it comes to contrapuntal based compositions, the game changes completely.
In the case of these simple pieces,
-2 independent lines, which sometimes even differ in rhythmic content
-phrases that can start anywhere within a bar, staggered phrases
-carefully worked out fingering, is even more important here
In short, much more material for the brain to process and memorize, I you want to be able to just sit down at a piano anywhere and rip off one of those pieces without a piece of paper in sight.

I gave you multiple places here to look for beginners learning classical; it appears you haven’t looked. You can stick with the same statement, but it is not true. Regardless of the general ‘threads’, beginners here are learning classical.[/quote]

Huh?
I guess YOU did not read the original post.
"I'm thinking of beginning pieces, ala in the Suzuki books 1&2"
Also, I see no place where I've asked for suggestions of easy pieces.

Not if they use Alfred's AIO/Basic Adult course, or Adult Piano Adventures, or most of the 20th (or even 21st!) century piano method series for children, though of course most incluce easy arrangements of classical music and/or the occasional traditional teaching piece here and there.

OTOH there are also plenty of methods that mostly stick to the centuries-old traditional piano teaching literature, such as you might find in the Suzuki or Russian School books, as well as Introduction to Classics to Moderns, Festival Collection, Keith Snell repertoire/etude books, Alfred Masterworks, etc.

So I'm not sure what the question is?

If you're asking what we did, well, I started with Snell myself and loved it, But my musical tastes are way too eclectic to be satisfied by all classical all the tiem, so after a while I began to explore other methods, as there were skills I wanted that I wasn't getting on my first path.

There is a certain confusion out there, regarding the exact name of certain pieces. Likely because they are not viewed as serious enough compositions, and seen as simple.
E.g. in a certain book I have, there are 5 pieces called 'Minuet'. All are associated with Bach in some way.
But as to the last one, I even found a recording by Lang Lang of it. I don't recall the title that was designated to it though...Other than Minuet.

I was using two of the Snell level 1 books among other more modern level 1 repertoire books for sight reading practice and quickly discovered that the level 1 baroque book was more difficult than the romantic & 20th century book. Guess its the nature of baroque music. I had planned to use the Anna Magdalena notebook among my stack of level 1 sight reading practice books and after doing some research, put a sticky note 'level 3 on the book.

The reason that the 5 pieces are called ‘minuet’ is either because that is what the composer indicated or because the composer did not explicitly give a title but the piece is clearly a minuet (a kind of dance in 3/4 time). Many (perhaps even most?) classical compositions have rather generic names that describe the musical form used (like sonata, concerto, minuet, waltz, etc.) You can always add the key signature to help identify it. Ideally, you can also give the indexing/catalog number (opus or Kochel or BWV/anh). Sometimes this may not be indicated on a reprint, but pieces by well known composers are generally well catalogued and have catalog numbers associated with them, even if they are not always indicated on scores.

With regard to Dogperson’s comments, I think they provided some threads where classical compositions for beginners are frequently discussed by forum participants; the threads Dogperson referenced were:
1. 40 pieces a year club; 2. Faber graduates; 3. Other people do piano marvel?
All of these have many posts about forum members working on beginner classical pieces.

I am learning Musette in G Major, J S Bach. My teacher gave it to me. It's going slowly because I have some basic techniques to improve, bad habits to break and learning to count. I'm a beginner student. Most that I have played (2 years) is classical and I am enjoying the music.