As his mother was dying, Philip Kennicott began to listen to the music of Bach obsessively. It was the only music that didn't seem trivial or irrelevant, and it enabled him to both experience her death and remove himself from it. For him, Bach's music held the elements of both joy and despair, life and its inevitable end. He spent the next five years trying to learn one of the composer's greatest keyboard masterpieces, the Goldberg Variations. In Counterpoint, he recounts his efforts to rise to the challenge and to fight through his grief by coming to terms with his memories of a difficult, complicated childhood. He describes the joys of mastering some of the piano pieces, the frustrations that plague his understanding of others, the technical challenges they pose, and the surpassing beauty of the melodies, harmonies and counterpoint that distinguish them. While exploring Bach's compositions he sketches a cultural history of playing the piano in the twentieth century. And he raises two questions that become increasingly interrelated, not unlike a contrapuntal passage in one of the variations itself: What does it mean to know a piece of music? What does it mean to know another human being?

The concept of stylus phantasticus (or 'fantastic style') as it was expressed in free keyboard music of the north German Baroque forms the focus of this book. Exploring both the theoretical background to the style and its application by composers and performers, Paul Collins surveys the development of Athanasius Kircher's original concept and its influence on music theorists such as Brossard, Janovka, Mattheson, and Walther. Turning specifically to fantasist composers of keyboard works, the book examines the keyboard toccatas of Merulo, Fresobaldi, Rossi and Froberger and their influence on north German organists Tunder, Weckmann, Reincken, Buxtehude, Bruhns, Lubeck, Bohm, and Leyding. The free keyboard music of this distinguished group highlights the intriguing relationship at this time between composition and performance, the concept of fantasy, and the understanding of originality and individuality in seventeenth-century culture.

Paul Harris's brilliant Improve your scales! Piano Grade 4 workbook contains the complete scales and arpeggios for the current ABRSM, Trinity, LCM and MTB Grade 4. It also uses finger fitness exercises, key pieces, sight-reading and simple improvisations to help you play scales and arpeggios with real confidence. An invaluable resource for students, the Improve your scales! Piano series covers all the keys and ranges required for each syllabus, helping you pick up valuable extra marks in exams. New edition, revised to support all major exam syllabuses from 2020.

Now in paperback! Hugely popular in the 19th century, and starting to regain popularity now, the literature for multiple pianos is relatively unknown. J.S. Bach began the history of keyboard music for three or more players around 1730; Mozart contributed to the literature. Other important composers_Czerny, Moscheles, Smetana, Glazunov, Rachmaninoff_continued the tradition for particular pianists and occasions. Louis Moreau Gottschalk used a large number of pianos and pianists for his popularly acclaimed 'monster concerts' in the Americas. By the early 20th century, a mass of transcriptions and arrangements had accumulated. Later in the century, such important 20th-century composers as Ives, Stravinsky, Antheil, Orff, Dallapiccola, Milhaud, and others composed original works for the medium. Includes a comprehensive bibliography with an illustrative, detailed guide to the catalogue. Cloth edition originally published in 1993.

Classical melodies from piano, opera and orchestral literature are revisited in this unique series. The arrangements feature jazz styles including ragtime and blues. Students who are familiar with some of these gems will enjoy their new settings while those playing them for the first time will become familiar with these wonderful melodies. Titles: Blues for Dolores * Blues March * Italian Jazz * Jazz Etude * Jazzy German Dance * Jazzy Spanish Song * Lullaby Jazz * Minuet in Jazz * Ragtime Can-Can * Ragtime Prelude.

This volume considers the influences and development of the English organ sonata tradition that began in the 1850s with compositions by W. T. Best and William Spark. With the expansion of the instrument's capabilities came an opportunity for organist-composers to consider the repertoire anew with many factors reinforcing a desire to elevate the literature to new heights. This study begins by examining the legacy of the keyboard sonata in Britain and especially the pedagogical lineage that was to be seen through Mendelssohn and ultimately the early organ sonatas. The abiding influence of William Crotch's lectures are studied to illuminate how a culture of conservatism emboldened the organist-composers towards compositions that were seen to represent the ideals of the Classical era but in a contemporary vein. The veneration of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven is then examined as composers wrote "portfolio" sonatas, each with a movement in a contrasting style to exhibit their compositional prowess while providing repertoire for the novice and connoisseur alike. Finally the volume considers how the British organist-composers who studied at the Leipzig Conservatorium had a direct bearing on the furtherance of an organ culture at home that in turn set the ground for the seminal work in the genre, Elgar's Sonata of 1895.

The twentieth-century revival of early music unfolded in two successive movements rooted respectively in nineteenth-century antiquarianism and in rediscovery of the value of original instruments. The present volume is a collection of insights reflecting the principal concerns of the second of those revivals, focusing on early keyboards, and beginning in the 1950s. The volume and its authors acknowledge Canadian harpsichordist Kenneth Gilbert (b. 1931) as one of this revival's leaders. The content reflects international research on early keyboard music, sources, instruments, theory, editing, and discography. Considerations that echo throughout the book are the problematics of source attributions, progressive institutionalization of early music, historical instruments as agents of artistic change and education, antecedents and networks of the revival seen as a social phenomenon, the impact of historical performance and the quest for understanding style and genre. The chapters cover historical performance practice, source studies, edition, theory and form, and instrument curating and building. Among their authors are prominent figures in performance, music history, editing, instrument building and restoration, and theory, some of whom engaged with the early keyboard revival as it was happening.

"19th-Century Piano Music" focuses on the core composers of the 19th-century repertoire, beginning with 2 chapters giving a general overview of the repertoire and keyboard technique of the era, and then individual chapters on Beethoven, Schubert, Weber, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, and the women composers of the era, particularly focusing on Fanny Hensel and Clara Schumann.

Series Information:
Routledge Studies in Musical Genres

Easy piano arrangements with song lyrics and chord symbols complete with song background notes and playing hints and tips. Suitable for grades 1-3.

Muzio Clementi was a famed composer, pianist, pedagogue, conductor, music publisher, editor, and piano manufacturer. His 6 Sonatinas, Opus 36, are highly regarded for their charm as well as pedagogical value. Also included is an outstanding CD recording from the Alfred library. Titles: No. 1 in C major * No. 2 in G major * No. 3 in C major * No. 4 in F major * No. 5 in G major * No. 6 in D major.

A supplement to Alfred's Basic Piano Library, this series is designed for students and teachers with limited or no experience in jazz and rock music styles. Perfect for individuals and group instruction and playable on both acoustic and electronic keyboards. Each piece is performed on the accompanying cassette tapes and GM disks.

The Foundations of Technique is about putting into practice everything that you wish to do at the instrument. This new and innovative approach to technique is for everyone interested in improving their piano playing and teaching. It includes information and exercises that are as relevant for beginners and intermediate players as for post-graduate students and professional concert pianists. Based on the long-standing, successful series of 'Masterclass' articles written for International Piano magazine, The Foundations of Technique focuses on the foundations and basic principles of a healthy and reliable technique. Concert pianist, writer and teacher, Murray McLachlan is the founder-director of the Chetham's International Summer School for Pianists. In addition to making over forty commercial recordings, he has been the editor of Piano Professional magazine since 2007. He is Head of Keyboard at Chetham's School of Music and a senior tutor at the Royal Northern College of Music.

Brahms Among Friends identifies patterns of listening, performance, and composition among close friends of Johannes Brahms and explores how those patterns informed the creation and reception of his music in the intimate genres of song, sonata, trio, and piano miniature. Among the tangled threads of counterpoint and circumstance that bound Brahms to his acquaintances was the technique of allusive musical borrowing, whereby a brief passage from a familiar work was drawn into the fabric of a new composition. For the specific listeners whose habits of mind and musicianship he knew best, allusive borrowings could become rhetorically charged gestures, persuasively revising the meanings his music conveyed and the interpretive strategies it invited. Primary documents, original manuscripts, music-analytic comparison, and kinesthetic parameters experienced in the act of performance all work in tandem to support ten case studies in the interplay between Brahms's small-scale works and the women and men who encountered them before publication. Central characters include violinist Joseph Joachim, singers Amalie Joachim, Julius Stockhausen, and Agathe von Siebold, composers Heinrich and Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, and pianists Emma Engelmann and Clara Schumann. For these musicians and for the composer himself, Brahms's allusive music served a broad variety of emotional needs and interpersonal ends. Yet across diverse repertoire and interdisciplinary correlates ranging from ethnography to psychoanalysis, each case study furthers a single, underlying aim: Yet across diverse repertoire and interdisciplinary correlates ranging from ethnography to psychoanalysis, each case study furthers a single, underlying aim: to reconstruct the mutually dependent perspectives of historically situated agents and restore forgotten features of their communicative landscapes as bases for both musical and historical scrutiny.

The composer and pianist Michael Finnissy (b. 1946) is an unmistakeable presence in the British and international new music scene, both for his immeasurable generosity as prolific composer for many different types of musicians, major advocate for the works of others, and performer and conductor who has also been a driving force behind ensembles; he was also President of the International Society for Contemporary Music from 1990 to 1996. His vast and enormously varied output confounds those who seek easy categorisations: once associated strongly with the 'new complexity', Finnissy is equally known as composer regularly engaged with many different folk musics, for working with amateur and community musicians, for a long-term engagement with sacred music, or as an advocate of Anglo-American 'experimental' music. Twenty years ago, a large-scale volume entitled Uncommon Ground: The Music of Michael Finnissy gave the first major overview of the output of any 'complex' composer. This new volume brings a greater plurality of perspectives and critical sensibility to bear upon an output which is almost twice as large as it was when the earlier book was published. A range of leading contributors - musicologists, composers, performers and others - each grapple with particular questions relating to Finnissy's music, often in ways which raise questions relating more widely to new music, and provide theoretical foundations for further of study both of Finnissy and other composers.

With the Harry Potter film series now complete, Alfred Music and Warner Bros. Entertainment are proud to present easy piano arrangements from the eight epic films together in one collectible volume. For the first time ever, 37 sheet music selections by John Williams, Patrick Doyle, Nicholas Hooper, and Alexandre Desplat are collected along with eight pages of color stills from The Sorcerer's Stone to The Deathly Hallows, Part 2. By popular request, "Leaving Hogwarts" from The Sorcerer's Stone appears in print in this collection for the first time. It's a perfect gift for pianists of all ages who love the music of Harry Potter. Titles: Diagon Alley * Family Portrait * Harry's Wondrous World * Hedwig's Theme * Leaving Hogwarts * Nimbus 2000 * Voldemort * The Chamber of Secrets * Fawkes the Phoenix * Buckbeak's Flight * Double Trouble * Hagrid the Professor * Harry in Winter * Hogwarts March * Potter Waltz * This Is the Night * Dumbledore's Army * Fireworks * Loved Ones and Leaving * Professor Umbridge * Dumbledore's Farewell * Harry and Hermione * In Noctem * When Ginny Kissed Harry * Farewell to Dobby * Godric's Hollow Graveyard * Harry and Ginny * Obliviate * Ron Leaves * Snape to Malfoy Manor * Courtyard Apocalypse * Harry's Sacrifice * Lily's Lullaby * Lily's Theme * A New Beginning * Severus and Lily * Statues.

Beginning pianists of all ages will cherish this excellent compilation of beloved piano classics. Selections include Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, Chopin's Funeral March, Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, Mozart's Rondo alla Turca and Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, plus compositions by Schubert, Debussy, Handel, Mendelssohn, and others.

(Vocal Piano). Songs in the Broadway Singer's Edition include the vocal line and lyrics paired with faithful reductions of the orchestral accompaniments. The songs are presented in their original keys with piano accompaniments carefully crafted for playability. The CD includes performances of these piano accompaniments. The disc works in any CD player and is also enhanced for computer use, allowing adjustment of both tempo and pitch. Includes these hits from Wicked: Dancing Through Life * Defying Gravity * For Good * I Couldn't Be Happier * I'm Not That Girl * No Good Deed * Popular * What Is This Feeling? * The Wizard and I * Wonderful.

The first edition of The English Chamber Organ was published in 1968. This new, revised edition takes into account the considerable research into chamber organs that has taken place over the last thirty years. Much of the book has been completely rewritten and expanded, and it includes a number of organs not detailed in the first edition. As its revised title suggests, this new edition covers foreign-make imports as well as British-made organs that were sent overseas. Part one comprises a series of chapters that cover the history of the chamber organ, its origins and development. Part two provides a general introduction to the construction of organs, while part three gives detailed descriptions of 196 British chamber organs, with information on their location, specifications, design, and suggestions for further reading. As a domestic instrument the chamber organ was often perceived to be as much a piece of furniture as an item of musical equipment. The Chamber Organ in Britain offers an assessment of the organ as both a musical instrument and as a decorative icon.

The Recital Books congratulate students for a job well done by providing correlated repertoire to their Lesson Books that are based on concepts they've already learned. As a result, the pieces are quickly mastered. Included in Recital 1B are the folk tunes "Camptown Races" and "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow," and imaginative originals like "The Elephant and the Flea" and "March of the Extra-Terrestrials."

Alfred's Basic Prep Course, Levels A through F, was written to answer a demand for a course of piano study designed specifically for students who are five years old and up. This course offers a careful introduction of fundamentals, music that fits comfortably under the young student's normal hand span, plus constant reinforcement, all leading to results beyond those generated by other piano methods. After Lesson Book B, the student may progress to Prep Course, Lesson Book C or choose to go directly into the faster paced Level 1B of Alfred's Basic Piano Library. The complete Prep Course consists of six books (Levels A through F).

Previously available only in three separate books, Howard Shore's award-winning music for The Lord of the Rings trilogy is now available as a deluxe single volume of solo piano sheet music. Adorned with gorgeous color stills from the motion pictures, this is the ultimate musical tour of Middle-earth for intermediate and advanced pianists.