Section II · General Knowledge · Exam prep
For each piece, a short script you can say aloud for each of the seven practice questions, plus the extra detail to keep going if the examiner lets you. Say it in your own words — do not recite it word for word.
Open a card, read the opening line, say the script out loud, then check the “Must-say” list. The questions are as remembered from a practice exam; the real wording may differ.
Tags in the extra detail: [S1] checked against a research source · [SITE] from this course · [CK-verify] common knowledge, still to be checked · [KB-unverified] from older notes, not checked · [SCORE] checked against the score of the edition in the photographs (bar numbers are that edition's) · [SCORE-PENDING] waits for a bar-by-bar reading of the score, so do not state it as fact.
Say first: Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and keyboard player who lived from 1685 to 1750, and his death is usually taken as the end of the Baroque period.
Bach was born in Eisenach, in central Germany, in 1685, and he died in Leipzig in 1750. He spent his whole career in Germany, working for churches and courts. He started as an organist, in Arnstadt and then Mühlhausen. Then he worked at the court of Weimar, first as organist and later as Konzertmeister. From 1717 he was Kapellmeister to a prince in Köthen. That court needed instrumental music, not church music, and that is where he finished Book One of the Well-Tempered Clavier, in 1722. In 1723 he moved to Leipzig as Thomaskantor. That means he was in charge of the music in the town's main churches and taught at the choir school, and he stayed there for the rest of his life. In his own time he was most famous as an organist, and some critics found his music too complicated and old-fashioned. But musicians kept studying it: Mozart and the young Beethoven both played the Well-Tempered Clavier. Besides keyboard music he wrote church cantatas, the St Matthew Passion, the Mass in B minor and the Brandenburg Concertos. My prelude and fugue comes from Book Two, which he put together in Leipzig around 1740.
research notes (Wikipedia "Johann Sebastian Bach"; bach-cantatas.com/Tour/Life.htm; deutschegrammophon.com Bach biography; bach-thueringen.de); this course.
Say first: Bach was a German composer of the late Baroque, and the German composers I'd name from his time are Telemann and Handel.
Bach belongs to the late Baroque in Germany. The most famous German composer of his own time was probably Georg Philipp Telemann, who lived from 1681 to 1767. He was close to the Bach family; he was the godfather of Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel. Then there is George Frideric Handel, born in 1685 like Bach, and not far away. Handel was German, but he made his career in London and became a British subject. Amazingly, he and Bach never met, even though Bach tried twice. Another German composer of the same generation was Christoph Graupner. From the generation before, there are Johann Pachelbel and Dieterich Buxtehude, the great organist in Lübeck, whom the young Bach travelled to hear. Outside Germany, the big names of the same period were Vivaldi in Italy, Domenico Scarlatti, who was born in the same year as Bach, and Rameau and Couperin in France. Bach knew Vivaldi's music very well, because he arranged his concertos for keyboard, and I think you can hear that Italian influence in the running figuration of my prelude.
this course's notes (Bach list, from Wikipedia); research notes.
Say first: The prelude is a moto perpetuo in continuous binary form, going from D minor to A minor and back, and the fugue is a three-voice fugue only twenty-seven bars long that packs in stretto and inversion.
The prelude is in three-four time and sixty-one bars long. It's a moto perpetuo, perpetual motion: a non-stop stream of semiquavers shared between the hands, with hand-crossings. The form is continuous binary, which means two halves but no repeat signs. The first half goes from D minor to the dominant, A minor, and the second half goes from A minor back home to D minor. In the second half the opening material comes back in A minor, and the hands swap material, which is called invertible counterpoint. It ends with a short coda over a held D, and the last chord is D major, a tierce de Picardie. The fugue is in common time, twenty-seven bars, in three voices. The subject has two halves: a quick zig-zag run in triplets, then a slow chromatic fall, the Baroque lament figure. The answer is a real answer, an exact copy a fifth higher. The countersubject moves in plain semiquavers against the triplets. The keys stay close to home: D minor, F major, A minor and G minor. The climax is a final stretto in D minor, with all three voices entering within one bar, one of them upside down. And the fugue ends on a bare D, with no third at all.
this course (Wikipedia "Prelude and Fugue in D minor, BWV 875"); this course's notes.
Say first: Book Two of the Well-Tempered Clavier was put together in Leipzig between about 1739 and 1742, so it is a late work, but this prelude has a longer history than that.
Bach finished Book One of the Well-Tempered Clavier in 1722, at Köthen. About twenty years later, in Leipzig, he put together a second set of twenty-four preludes and fugues, again one in every major and minor key. The main manuscript of Book Two is dated between 1739 and 1742. Bach was in his mid-fifties then, and he died in 1750, so this is late Bach. It comes from the same years as the Goldberg Variations and the start of the Art of Fugue. But Book Two wasn't written from scratch. My D minor prelude exists in an earlier, shorter version, called BWV 875a, and the oldest copy of it was made by one of Bach's pupils in 1729. The prelude grew from 43 bars to 61, and the last part of that growth came from a revision in the early 1740s. There is an earlier version of the fugue too. So I'd call it a late work that contains older music Bach went back and revised. It wasn't printed in his lifetime: the first editions came out in 1801, and Book Two was actually printed before Book One. That history matters to me, because my edition has had to choose between versions.
research notes (bl.uk/stories/blogs/posts/preserving-bachs-manuscripts; Wikipedia "The Well-Tempered Clavier" and "Prelude and Fugue in D minor, BWV 875"; pianolibrary.org; blog.henle.de); this course.
Say first: Bach's style is above all contrapuntal, meaning several independent melodies at once, but he also absorbed Italian and French music, so his style is a kind of synthesis.
The first thing people mean by Bach's style is counterpoint: several melodies going at the same time, each one independent, but all fitting together into the harmony. The fugue is the most famous form of this, and he also loved canons; the Goldberg Variations contain nine of them. The second thing is that he borrowed from other countries. At Weimar he arranged Italian concertos, including Vivaldi's, for keyboard, and he took rhythms, forms and textures from Italian and French music. You can hear that in my prelude. It's a non-stop stream of semiquavers, and the broken-chord patterns sound like a violinist rocking across the strings. Third, a lot of his church music grows out of the Lutheran chorale, the hymn tunes of his church. Fourth, he liked to work through a whole system: the Well-Tempered Clavier goes through all twenty-four keys, and the Art of Fugue builds a whole cycle on one theme. And his music speaks. In my fugue, the second half of the subject is a slow chromatic fall, a Baroque lament figure. So when I play the fugue I keep every voice clear, and I give the lament half more weight than the quick first half.
research notes (Wikipedia "Johann Sebastian Bach" and "Prelude and Fugue in D minor, BWV 875"; bach-cantatas.com); this course (G1).
Say first: Bach is the high point of the late Baroque (his death in 1750 is the usual end-date of the period), and this pair uses its main features: continuous motion, counterpoint, and one strong character per piece.
The late Baroque is roughly the first half of the eighteenth century. Music is built on a strong bass line and harmony, often with a lot of counterpoint on top. A piece usually keeps one main character, or "affect", all the way through, with a rhythm that keeps driving. And composers shared a common musical language, with figures that had known meanings. My prelude is a perfect example of continuous motion. It's a moto perpetuo, a non-stop stream of semiquavers in one pattern from start to finish. The fugue is pure counterpoint, three independent voices. The falling chromatic line in the subject is a lament figure that a Baroque listener would recognise, so the minor key here is a shared language, not a personal confession. After Bach, the early Classical, or galant, style of his own sons' generation wanted simple, singing melodies over a light accompaniment. That's one reason people thought Bach old-fashioned. Mozart and Beethoven still studied his fugues, the Romantics like Chopin and Schumann loved the Well-Tempered Clavier, and in the twentieth century composers like Shostakovich went back to the prelude and fugue. So I play my Bach with a steady pulse and clear voices, not with Romantic swells.
research notes (neo-Baroque definition, Wikipedia "Neoclassicism (music)"); this course (G1).
Say first: Early on, Bach soaked up other people's styles, from North German organ music to Italian concertos, while late in life he turned to strict counterpoint, canon and the old church style.
As a young man, Bach learned by absorbing other styles. In the winter of 1705 he travelled to Lübeck to hear the organist Buxtehude. Later, at Weimar, he arranged Italian concertos, especially Vivaldi's, for keyboard, and Italian and French ideas went into his own music. At Köthen he wrote instrumental music, like dance suites, and in 1721 he presented the Brandenburg Concertos. In his last ten years or so, in Leipzig, his music becomes more concentrated and more learned. He wrote canons and big contrapuntal projects: the Goldberg Variations in 1742, the Musical Offering and the canonic variations on "Vom Himmel hoch" in 1747, and the Art of Fugue. He also completed the Mass in B minor, which brings back the old strict church style. My piece shows both sides. The prelude is a revised version of an older piece, and its figuration still sounds like Italian violin writing. The fugue is very late Bach: in only twenty-seven bars it combines stretto and inversion, and the subject has the same shape as the royal theme of the Musical Offering. So I play the fugue as something dense and serious, and I make sure every entry can be heard.
research notes (Wikipedia "Johann Sebastian Bach"; bach-cantatas.com; deutschegrammophon.com); this course.
Say first: Bach wrote the Well-Tempered Clavier for "Clavier", which in his day meant keyboard instruments like the harpsichord, the clavichord and the organ, not the modern piano.
The word "Clavier" in the title just means keyboard. In Bach's time that meant the harpsichord, the clavichord, and the organ too. The harpsichord plucks the strings, so you can't play louder or softer by touch, and it has no sustaining pedal. The clavichord is the opposite: it is touch-sensitive, but very quiet. Bach did know early pianos. Gottfried Silbermann built some, and according to Bach's pupil Agricola, Bach first found the treble too weak, but later gave Silbermann's instruments his full approval. Still, he didn't write this music for the piano. "Well-tempered" doesn't necessarily mean equal temperament either. It means a tuning in which all twenty-four keys are usable, and nobody knows exactly which tuning Bach used. On a modern piano I have things Bach never had: a sustaining pedal, a much bigger and longer-lasting sound, and a far wider range of loud and soft by touch than the harpsichord or the early pianos gave. So I use very little pedal, just small touches, so that the three voices of the fugue stay clear. I shape the music mainly through articulation and voicing, and I make sure the fugue subject comes through every time it enters, without big Romantic crescendos.
research notes (Wikipedia "The Well-Tempered Clavier" and "Gottfried Silbermann"; JSTOR Daily); this course (G1, G3).
Say first: Joseph Haydn was an Austrian composer, born in 1732 and died in 1809, and for nearly thirty years, from 1761 to 1790, he worked as a court musician for the Esterházy princes.
Haydn was born in 1732 in Rohrau, a village in Lower Austria. His father was a wheelwright. At about eight he went to Vienna as a choirboy at St Stephen's Cathedral, and when his voice broke he had to leave and live on odd jobs and teaching for some years. In 1761 he joined the court of the Esterházy princes, and from 1766 he was in charge of all the music there. The family's new palace was far from any big city, and Haydn later said that because nobody was near to confuse him, he was "forced to become original". In 1790 the court orchestra was dismissed, so Haydn was free to travel, and he made two trips to London in the 1790s, where his last twelve symphonies were a huge success. Back in Vienna he wrote the oratorios The Creation and The Seasons, and he died there in 1809. He wrote more than a hundred symphonies, nearly seventy string quartets, masses, operas, and lots of keyboard sonatas. He was a close friend of Mozart and taught Beethoven for a while. My sonata comes from the middle of his Esterházy years, when his music suddenly got darker and more dramatic.
Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music and Gale entries via https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/music-history-composers-and-performers-biographies/franz-joseph-haydn ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Haydn ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haydn_and_Mozart ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papa_Haydn ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._94_(Haydn) ; Henle preface HN 0205 (string quartets) https://www.henle.de/media/96/aa/3c/1697725871/0205-1697725871-sync.pdf ; https://www.wrti.org/post/haydn-symphonies-first-and-last-discoveries-fleisher-collection ; this course.
Say first: Haydn was Austrian and worked in the Viennese Classical period, so the obvious names are Mozart and Haydn's younger brother Michael Haydn, and also Dittersdorf and Wagenseil.
The most important one is Mozart. He was born in Salzburg in 1756 and died in Vienna in 1791, so he was about twenty-four years younger than Haydn, but they became close friends and learned from each other. Then there is Haydn's younger brother, Michael Haydn, who lived from 1737 to 1806 and is mostly remembered for his church music. Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, 1739 to 1799, was another Austrian who wrote a huge number of symphonies. From the generation before Haydn, there is Georg Christoph Wagenseil, a Viennese court composer, and Georg Matthias Monn, who wrote a symphony in 1740, before Haydn wrote any. Two more people worked in Vienna but weren't Austrian: Salieri, who was Italian and directed the court opera, and Beethoven, who was born in Germany, moved to Vienna and studied with Haydn. And one composer who wasn't Austrian but mattered hugely to Haydn is C. P. E. Bach in Germany - his expressive style is all over my sonata. Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven together are often called the First Viennese School.
this course's notes (Haydn Q2 list, Wikipedia-based); research notes (Monn 1740 and Dittersdorf via https://www.wrti.org/post/haydn-symphonies-first-and-last-discoveries-fleisher-collection ; models via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Haydn ; minor-key symphony trend from a Gramophone review summary).
Say first: It's a three-movement sonata: a first movement in sonata form in C minor, a slow movement in A flat major, and a finale that is also in sonata form and ends in C minor with no Picardy third.
The first movement, Allegro moderato, is in sonata form in C minor. The first subject starts quietly, in parallel thirds and sixths, and then the music moves to the second subject in E flat major, the relative major, which is the normal plan for a minor-key Classical movement. What's unusual is that there's no clear pause before the second subject - the exposition just keeps flowing - so scholars actually disagree about where the second subject begins. The movement also has written-out cadenzas, marked Adagio with pauses, which sound improvised. In the development the music passes through darker minor keys and then a passage of sliding, unstable harmony before it reaches the dominant and the recapitulation. The slow movement, Andante con moto, is in A flat major, the flat submediant, a warm key a long way from C minor. It's a singing, aria-like melody over a running bass, with lots of syncopation. The finale, Allegro, is in 3/4 and starts almost like a minuet, but it's a full sonata-form movement with hand-crossings, and it ends in C minor with no Picardy third. That bleak ending is the point of the whole sonata, so I don't soften it.
this course (movement table, Hepokoski & Darcy, Suurpää, Larsen, Brown, Beghin); this course; kb 02 and 99 for structure ideas only.
Say first: Haydn sketched this sonata in 1771 and it was published in 1780, so it's an early-to-middle work from his Sturm und Drang years - definitely not a late one.
The story of the date is a bit messy, and I find that interesting. Part of Haydn's own manuscript survives, and it's dated 1771. But it's only a fragment: it has parts of the first and last movements, some of it just sketches, and the slow movement isn't in it at all. So we know he was working on the sonata in 1771, but nobody knows exactly when he finished it. It was printed by Artaria in Vienna in April 1780, as the last of a set of six sonatas. When Haydn sent it to the publisher, he said he was sending it last "because it is the longest and most difficult". The set was dedicated to two sisters, Katharina and Marianna von Auenbrugger, but that dedication came from the publisher, not from Haydn. In 1771 Haydn was 39, working at the Esterházy court, in the period people call Sturm und Drang, when his music became darker and more dramatic. His late sonatas, written in London in the 1790s, came more than twenty years later. So I would call it an early-to-middle work - a turning point on the way to his mature style, not an early galant piece and not a late one.
Henle urtext HN 1575 preface (Silke Schloen, 2021), as verified in this course's notes; letter of 31 January 1780 (Bartha no. 25) via Henle; this course (autograph, Brown, Leisinger, contract argument); this course.
Say first: Haydn's style is Viennese Classical - clear forms, especially sonata form - but full of wit and surprise, and in pieces like my sonata it can also be stormy and intense.
I'd describe Haydn's style in four points. First, he loves to build a lot out of a little. In sonata form he often uses the same theme again where you expect a new one, and in the recapitulation he likes to rearrange things rather than just repeat them. Second, wit and surprise: the most famous example is the sudden loud chord in the slow movement of the "Surprise" Symphony, and he also writes false endings that trick you into clapping too early. Third, around 1768 to 1772 he wrote a group of very intense minor-key works, the so-called Sturm und Drang pieces, and my C minor sonata is one of them. Fourth, he learned a lot from C. P. E. Bach - Haydn said he owed him a great deal - and you can hear that in sudden pauses, abrupt changes of mood, and passages that sound like a singer speaking. In my sonata you hear this in the sudden loud-soft contrasts, the dramatic silences, and the written-out cadenzas in the first movement that sound improvised. So when I play it, I try to make the surprises really surprising, instead of smoothing them out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Haydn ("Style" section, citing Webster, Rosen, Geiringer); Gale entry via encyclopedia.com (link in Q1); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solo_piano_compositions_by_Joseph_Haydn ; this course.
Say first: Haydn's career runs right through the Classical period - he starts in the light galant, early Classical style and ends with the mature Classical style of the 1790s - and my sonata sits in between, with a strong dose of C. P. E. Bach's expressive style.
After the late Baroque, with its complex counterpoint, composers in the mid-1700s wanted something simpler: the galant style, with song-like tunes over light accompaniments. Alongside it was the "sensitive style" of C. P. E. Bach, which is emotional, with sudden contrasts and pauses. That is roughly the early Classical period, and Haydn's early divertimenti and first quartets belong there. The mature Classical style - balanced phrases, sonata form, motifs developed through a whole movement - is what Haydn and Mozart are famous for, from the 1780s on, in works like the Op. 33 quartets and the London symphonies. But Haydn still kept something of the Baroque: three of his Op. 20 quartets end with real fugues. My sonata, from the 1770s, mixes these things. It's in sonata form, and the second subject goes to the relative major, which is the normal Classical plan. But the sudden contrasts, the silences and the written-out cadenzas come from C. P. E. Bach. Romantic is too late for Haydn, but the tragic minor ending is one reason writers compare this sonata with Beethoven. And 20th-century neo-Baroque doesn't apply to Haydn at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galant_music ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_period_(music) ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Haydn ; this course's notes (Q6 note on the generic list); this course.
Say first: Haydn's music moves from light, galant entertainment music in the 1750s and 60s to the large, sophisticated and very public works of the 1790s, like the London symphonies and The Creation.
Haydn had a long career, so it helps to think of it in stages. His early works, from the late 1750s and the 1760s, are things like divertimenti, early symphonies and his first string quartets - light entertainment music; the first quartets were written for a baron's music parties. Then, around 1768 to 1772, comes the Sturm und Drang group: darker minor-key works like the "Farewell" Symphony, the Op. 20 quartets and my C minor sonata. In 1781 he wrote the Op. 33 quartets and said they were written "in a new and completely special way" - that's often seen as the Classical style fully arriving. His late works are from the 1790s: the twelve London symphonies, the late quartets, his last piano sonatas, and the oratorios The Creation and The Seasons. Compared with the early pieces, the late ones are bigger, more complex and more sophisticated, written for big public audiences and larger orchestras with trumpets and timpani. Even the keyboard changed: some of his last sonatas were written in London for the English piano, with a fuller tone, pedals and a wider range. My sonata sits in the middle, and it's one of the most intense pieces of his whole career.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Haydn (style periods); Gale and Oxford entries via encyclopedia.com (link in Q1); Henle prefaces HN 0205 https://www.henle.de/media/96/aa/3c/1697725871/0205-1697725871-sync.pdf and HN 1577 https://www.henle.de/media/fa/4c/40/1697725901/1577-1697725901-sync.pdf ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solo_piano_compositions_by_Joseph_Haydn ; this course.
Say first: We can't name one single instrument for this sonata: around 1771 to 1780 Haydn's keyboard music was played on harpsichord, fortepiano or clavichord, but the dynamics in this piece call for a touch-sensitive instrument, which a harpsichord can't give.
This is a tricky question, because there isn't a one-word answer. Until the 1780s, Haydn's keyboard music was played on the harpsichord or the early piano, the fortepiano, and at home also on the clavichord. The piano only became his favourite instrument in the late 1780s. The funny thing is that Haydn's own manuscript of this sonata says "for the harpsichord", but the music has sudden loud and soft markings, and a harpsichord can't change its volume through how hard you press the keys. So the music needs a touch-sensitive instrument: a clavichord or a fortepiano. Some scholars think he first wrote it for the clavichord. When it was printed in 1780, the title page said "for harpsichord or fortepiano", so the publisher could sell it to owners of either. The keyboards of the time had about five octaves, and in the finale Haydn uses almost the whole range. On a modern grand, with a heavier action, longer sustain and a much more powerful bass, I have to be careful: I play the forte-piano contrasts as sudden switches, keep them dry with very little pedal, and keep the left hand light so the texture stays clear.
Henle preface HN 1577 (Hob. XVI:50) https://www.henle.de/media/fa/4c/40/1697725901/1577-1697725901-sync.pdf ; Henle preface HN 1533 (Hob. XVI:37) https://www.henle.de/media/a9/54/53/1697725835/1533-1697725835-sync.pdf ; Henle HN 1575 preface via this course's notes.
Say first: Chopin was a Polish composer and pianist, born in 1810 near Warsaw, who spent the second half of his short life in Paris and wrote almost everything for the piano.
Frédéric Chopin was born in 1810 in Żelazowa Wola, a village near Warsaw. His family always kept his birthday on the first of March, though the church record says the twenty-second of February. He grew up in Warsaw and studied composition with Józef Elsner, who wrote in his report that Chopin was a musical genius. In November 1830, when he was twenty, he left Poland for Vienna. Weeks later the November Uprising broke out against Russian rule, and he never went home again. From 1831 he lived in Paris. He earned his living mainly by teaching, and he didn't much like giving big public concerts, and he played most often in salons. For about nine years he was the partner of the writer George Sand. He died of tuberculosis in Paris in 1849, aged thirty-nine. Almost all his music involves the piano: mazurkas and polonaises from Polish dances, nocturnes, études, preludes, ballades, scherzos, sonatas and waltzes. Outside solo piano there are two piano concertos, a cello sonata and some Polish songs. He said Bach and Mozart were the two composers who shaped him most. And his singing melodies and bold harmony influenced Liszt, Wagner and Debussy. My waltz comes from his last year in Warsaw, just before he left.
research notes (chopin.pl/biography_chopin.en.html; chopin.pl/biografia_tworczosci.en.html; henle.de HN 771; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frédéric_Chopin); this course.
Say first: Chopin is an early Romantic Polish composer, so from Poland I'd name his teacher Józef Elsner, Karol Kurpiński and Maria Szymanowska, and a little later Stanisław Moniuszko.
Chopin belongs to the early Romantic period, roughly the 1820s to the 1840s, and he was Polish. In Warsaw, the most important figure for him was his teacher, Józef Elsner. Elsner ran the Warsaw School of Music and was one of the first composers in Poland to use folk music in his works. Karol Kurpiński was a composer and conductor who organised much of Warsaw's musical life when Chopin was young. Maria Szymanowska was one of the first professional virtuoso pianists of the nineteenth century. She wrote some of the first concert études and nocturnes in Poland, in the brilliant style of the years just before Chopin. A bit younger is Stanisław Moniuszko, born in 1819, who is called the father of Polish national opera. Outside Poland, the big early Romantic names are his own generation: Liszt, who was Hungarian, Mendelssohn and Schumann from Germany, and Berlioz from France. Liszt and Berlioz were among his friends in Paris. So Chopin sits in a generation of pianist-composers, but he is the one who made Polish dance rhythms into concert music, as in his mazurkas and polonaises.
this course's notes (section 3, Chopin list); research notes (chopin.pl/biografia_tworczosci.en.html; chopin.pl/biography_chopin.en.html); en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Józef_Elsner; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karol_Kurpiński; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Szymanowska; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanisław_Moniuszko (lead sentences and dates checked 2026-10-11); this course.
Say first: It's a waltz in E minor built from a refrain that keeps coming back, with an introduction at the start, a bright middle section in E major, and a brilliant coda at the end.
The waltz is in 3/4 with the typical oom-pah-pah left hand. It opens with an eight-bar introduction, bars 1 to 8, spread-out E minor chords over a bass that stays on E. The main theme, A, starts at bar 9 in E minor, and it comes back at bar 41 and again at bar 100. B starts at bar 25, still in E minor, and its bass falls by semitones from E down to B. The repeat sign at bar 25 means B and A are played twice. At bar 58 the key signature changes to four sharps: E major, the parallel major, not the relative major G. It is marked dolce, and around bars 75 to 82 it turns towards G sharp minor. At bar 100 the key goes back to E minor and A returns, shortened to 12 bars. The coda starts at bar 112. Over a bass that rises by semitones there is a Neapolitan sixth in bar 112, a German sixth in bar 115 and a dominant seventh in bar 121. It ends by alternating B major and E minor chords, and the last chord is plain E minor, so there is no tierce de Picardie. Sources label the form differently, ternary with an introduction or a modified rondo, so I talk about A, B and C sections, not first and second subjects.
score of the edition in the photographs (two independent transcriptions, 2026-10-11, differences settled against the photographs); research notes (enc.piano.or.jp/en/musics/491; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waltz_in_E_minor_(Chopin)); this course ("Inside the music", "How fast?"); this course (Chopin B. 56 fixes).
Say first: It's an early work: Chopin wrote it around 1830, when he was about twenty and still in Poland, but it wasn't printed until 1868, nearly forty years later and long after his death.
The waltz dates from around 1830. Nobody has an exact month, because Chopin's own manuscript is lost. It comes from just before he left Poland in November 1830, so it belongs to his Warsaw years. That makes it clearly an early work. His mature period is usually said to begin around 1831, with the Études Op. 10. Chopin never published it himself. It was first printed in 1868, nineteen years after he died, by Kaufmann in Warsaw and Schott in Mainz at the same time. That is why it has no opus number at all. You'll see "Op. posthumous" on it, meaning published after his death, and catalogue numbers instead, like B. 56 or CT 222. Older editions call it "Waltz No. 14", because it was the last of the traditional fourteen waltzes to reach print. People often say it was "written first and published last", but that's not right. He had already written other waltzes, for example the E major waltz of 1829. So I'd describe it as one of his early Warsaw waltzes: numbered last, but written young.
research notes (chopin.pl/list.en.html - first editions; imslp.org/wiki/Waltzes_(posthumous)_(Chopin,_Frederic); enc.piano.or.jp/en/musics/491; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waltz_in_E_minor_(Chopin); en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waltzes_(Chopin); chopinonline.ac.uk ACO Schott entry; chopin.pl/ewolucja_stylu.en.html); this course.
Say first: Chopin's style joins two things: brilliant, virtuoso piano writing and long, singing melodies, with very adventurous harmony underneath.
Chopin's style grew out of the "brilliant style" of pianist-composers like Hummel, Field and Weber: fast, glittering passage-work. But even in his early pieces he added something of his own, a singing, lyrical melody. A lot of his ornamentation comes from opera singing, the decorated lines of bel canto. His harmony was bold for his time: lots of chromatic notes and quick, unexpected changes of key. Polish dance is a big part of his identity, above all in the mazurkas and polonaises. He also turned short dances and character pieces into serious concert music. His waltzes, for example, were written for the salon, to be listened to, not for the ballroom. A famous part of his playing is rubato. His pupil Mikuli wrote that the accompanying hand kept strict time, while the singing hand moved freely. He also used the whole range of the keyboard and wrote careful pedal markings. My E minor waltz shows the early side of this: it's brilliant and virtuosic in the outer sections, then the middle section in E major is gentle and singing. So when I play it, I keep the left hand's oom-pah-pah steady and let the right hand sing over it.
research notes (chopin.pl/biografia_tworczosci.en.html; chopin.pl/ewolucja_stylu.en.html; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frédéric_Chopin; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waltzes_(Chopin); enc.piano.or.jp/en/musics/491; henle.de HN 771); this course.
Say first: Chopin is a Romantic composer, but he was trained in the Classical tradition and loved Bach, so you can hear Baroque and Classical roots under a Romantic surface.
The Romantic period is the one Chopin belongs to. Romantic features include song-like melody, rich chromatic harmony, freer forms, short character pieces, national colour, and the piano used for its full range and pedal. All of those are in Chopin. But he grew up on older music. He was taught in the tradition of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and he said Bach and Mozart shaped him most. From the late Baroque he took counterpoint. His teacher Elsner was strict about it, and Chopin played Bach all his life; in his late works there are more inner voices and counterpoint. From the Classical style he kept clarity: clear melody over accompaniment, balanced phrases and clear keys. My waltz shows this mix. On the Classical side it has a steady oom-pah-pah accompaniment and a returning main theme. On the Romantic side it has a dramatic, virtuosic sound, chromatic lines, and a surprise turn to E major in the middle. Twentieth-century neo-Baroque doesn't apply to Chopin, because it came about eighty years after his death. The link goes the other way: later composers like Debussy and Szymanowski learned from him.
research notes (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frédéric_Chopin; chopin.pl/biography_chopin.en.html; chopin.pl/biografia_tworczosci.en.html; radiotimescds.com liner note; enc.piano.or.jp/en/musics/491); this course's notes (period framing); this course.
Say first: Early Chopin is brilliant and outgoing, in the virtuoso style of the 1820s; late Chopin, after about 1840, is more concentrated and inward, with richer harmony and more inner voices, though the change was gradual.
In his early works, written in Warsaw up to 1830, Chopin uses the brilliant style: dazzling passage-work, clear melody and accompaniment, and showy effects. Good examples are the two piano concertos from 1829 to 1830, and my waltz, which is brilliant and virtuosic. The harmony is already colourful, but the chromatic notes are decoration; they don't really disturb the key. His mature style begins around 1831, with the Études Op. 10. Then after about 1840, the Chopin Institute says he gave up strong effects and direct emotional outbursts. Instead he went for concentration, more restraint, and deeper, more reflective expression, while his harmony became even more complex. Late works include the B minor Sonata, the Barcarolle, the Polonaise-Fantaisie, the Mazurkas Op. 63 and the Cello Sonata, all from the mid-1840s. A good pair to compare is his early Sonata in C minor, Op. 4, from 1828, and the B minor Sonata, Op. 58, from 1844. But scholars stress that his style matured gradually, without sudden breaks. So in my waltz I play up the early side: a clear, steady dance pulse and a bright, brilliant sound, rather than the freer, more complex feeling of his late music.
research notes (chopin.pl/ewolucja_stylu.en.html - Gołąb; chopin.pl/biografia_tworczosci.en.html; chopin.pl/biography_chopin.en.html; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Frédéric_Chopin; radiotimescds.com Chopin - Late Masterpieces liner note); this course.
Say first: Chopin's favourite piano was the French Pleyel, a lighter instrument than a modern grand, with a shorter-lasting sound and fewer keys, and that changes how I use the pedal and voice the chords in this waltz.
In Paris, Chopin's favourite pianos were made by Pleyel, though he also played Érard and Broadwood. He said he liked the Pleyel when he felt in good form, because his fingers felt in direct contact with the hammers, and the Érard when he was tired, because its bright tone came "ready-made". Compared with a modern concert grand, his pianos were lighter in touch and built partly of wood rather than on a full iron frame. The sound died away much faster, and they had fewer keys, about six and two-thirds octaves instead of over seven. There were two pedals, the soft pedal and the sustaining pedal. But my waltz is from about 1830, before he moved to Paris. In Warsaw he played and composed on a piano made by a Warsaw builder, Buchholtz. So this piece was probably written for a Warsaw piano like that, not for a Pleyel, because it dates from before he left Poland. On a modern Steinway the sound lasts much longer and the bass is much heavier. So I change the pedal often, so the left hand's oom-pah-pah doesn't blur. I keep the bass chords light and let the melody sing over them. In the coda I hold back a little in the bass, so the fast passages stay clear.
research notes (chopin.pl pianist page; czasopisma.nifc.pl Chopin Review 3, Ishimura; fortepian.instrumenty.edu.pl/en/pianos/show/piano/10; finchcocks.co.uk Pleyel 1842; chopinnw.org "Chopin's Pianos"; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frédéric_Chopin); this course.
Say first: Béla Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist, and also one of the first great scientific collectors of folk music.
Béla Bartók was born in 1881 in Nagyszentmiklós, a small town that was in Hungary then and is in Romania today. His mother gave him his first piano lessons when he was six. He studied piano and composition at the Budapest Academy of Music, and his piano teacher, István Thomán, had been a pupil of Liszt. At first he wrote in a late-Romantic style, influenced by Liszt, Brahms and Richard Strauss. Then, from about 1905, he and his friend Zoltán Kodály started going out to villages to collect peasant songs, and Bartók recorded them on a phonograph, a machine that recorded onto wax cylinders. He started collecting Romanian music in 1909, and the seven tunes in my piece were recorded in villages in 1910 and 1912. He taught piano at the Budapest Academy for almost thirty years. He was strongly against the Nazis, so in 1940 he emigrated to America, and there he wrote the Concerto for Orchestra. He died of leukaemia in New York in 1945. For me the key thing is that he was a scientist of folk music as well as a composer, and in these dances you are hearing real village tunes that he recorded himself.
research notes §1 (Bartók Archives https://zti.hu/bartok/exhibition/en_P3.htm ; https://bartok-gyujtesek.zti.hu/en ; Encyclopedia.com; Wikipedia "Béla Bartók"; Aspen Music Festival note on Concerto for Orchestra); this course.
Say first: Bartók was Hungarian, so the first name is Zoltán Kodály, and then Ernő Dohnányi, Leó Weiner and László Lajtha.
Bartók was Hungarian, so the composers I'd name first are Hungarians of his generation. The most important is Zoltán Kodály, who was just a year younger. He was Bartók's close friend and his partner in collecting folk songs, and he is famous for his choral music and his method of music teaching. Then there is Ernő Dohnányi, a few years older, a brilliant pianist and conductor who helped to make Bartók's music known. Leó Weiner was the other leading Hungarian composer of that time, and an important teacher in Budapest. László Lajtha was another Hungarian composer who also collected folk music. And a generation later came Sándor Veress, who studied with both Bartók and Kodály. There is also a link on the Romanian side. These dances use Romanian tunes from an area that was part of Hungary then and is part of Romania now. So I could also mention George Enescu, the great Romanian composer, whose music was influenced by Romanian folk music too. But he is a link through the folk tunes, not someone from the same nation. Outside Hungary, Bartók's big contemporaries were Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Debussy and Ravel.
this course's notes §3 (Dalos, https://www.zti.hu/en/mza/hunmusic/131-dalos-hungarian-music-20th-century ; Wikipedia "Béla Bartók", "Zoltán Kodály", "George Enescu"); this course (contemporaries list).
Say first: It is a suite of six short dances built on seven real folk tunes, so the form is the order and contrast of the dances, not sonata form or rondo.
The Romanian Folk Dances are a suite of six short dances using seven folk tunes, because the last dance has two. Each dance is basically one folk tune, kept unchanged, with Bartók's accompaniment. So there are no first and second subjects, and I wouldn't look for classical devices like a Neapolitan sixth or a tierce de Picardie, because the tunes are modal, not major and minor. The interest is in the order of the dances. Number one, the Stick Dance, is a strong, moderate opening, from a tune played by two Roma fiddlers. Number two, Brâul, the sash dance, is short and quick, from a peasant flute player. Number three, Pe loc, which means "in one spot", is the slow, mysterious one, from the same flute player. Number four, the dance from Bucium, is moderate, in three time, and rhythmically the strangest of the set. Number five is a Romanian "polka", fast and lopsided, and it runs straight into number six without a break. Number six, Mărunțel, the fast dance, has two tunes, and the second one is faster still, so the suite drives to a loud finish. That ending is the climax, so I plan the whole set as one arc that gets faster and stronger towards the end.
research notes §2a-§2c (Bartók Archives catalogue https://zti.btk.mta.hu/en/ba/bartok-compositions/folk-music ; Henle preface and comments for HN 1402); this course §2, §4; this course; kb research notes (structure ideas only).
Say first: Bartók wrote the Romanian Folk Dances for piano in the spring of 1915, and I would call it a middle-period work, not an early or a late one.
Bartók wrote the Romanian Folk Dances in 1915, during the First World War. He wrote them in the spring, at almost the same time as two other small pieces based on Romanian folk music, the Sonatina and the Romanian Christmas Carols. They were published in Vienna by Universal Edition in 1918, and in the same year his orchestral version was first performed in Budapest. In 1934 he revised the piano version, and that is when the timing of each section was printed in the score. Added up, they come to four minutes and three seconds. He dedicated the set to Ion Bușiția, a teacher in the town of Beiuș, who was the first person to support his collecting of Romanian folk music. So is it early or late? Bartók was thirty-four, and he lived to sixty-four, so I'd call it a middle-period work. It comes after his late-Romantic early pieces and after his big collecting trips, but before the more radical music of the 1920s and the late works he wrote in America. It is also one of his simplest pieces, so I try to play it as plain, lively dance music rather than as a showpiece.
research notes §0, §2a, §2c (Henle preface and comments for HN 1402, https://www.henle.de/media/46/28/57/1697725811/1402-1697725811-sync.pdf and https://www.henle.de/media/90/29/81/1697725629/1402-1697725629-sync.pdf ; Universal Edition page https://www.universaledition.com/en/Works/Romanian-Folk-Dances/P0044170 ; Bartók Jr. Chronicle https://library.hungaricana.hu/en/view/MKI_SK_Bartok_EN/?pg=175 ); this course.
Say first: Bartók's style grew out of the peasant music he collected: old modes, irregular dance rhythms and a hard, percussive way of using the piano.
On his collecting trips Bartók found that many peasant tunes used old modes and pentatonic scales, not just major and minor. He said this freed him from the major-minor system, and it shaped everything he wrote. He also loved the irregular rhythms of village dances. In a 1931 essay he described three ways a composer can use folk music. You can keep the tune unchanged and add an accompaniment. You can invent a new tune in folk style. Or you can absorb the folk style so completely that it becomes your musical mother tongue. The Romanian Folk Dances are the first way. Bartók said himself that the tunes are used in their original form, without alteration. That's why the harmony is deliberately simple: it should never swamp the melody. Other fingerprints of his style are drones, which are notes held underneath a tune like a bagpipe, and a spiky, percussive piano style that first appeared in his Allegro barbaro of 1911. Later in life he combined folk music with classical forms and modern harmony. For me this means playing these dances in strict dance rhythm, with clear accents and very little pedal, because they are village dance music, not salon pieces.
research notes §3 (Bartók Archives autobiography page; Deutsche Grammophon biography https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/composers/bela-bartok/biography ; Henle preface; Patraş, Studia UBB Musica 2022; Wikipedia "Béla Bartók"); this course §3, §5, §7; this course.
Say first: The Romanian Folk Dances are early twentieth-century folk-based music, not neo-Baroque: Bartók's turn to older models only came around 1926.
Each period has its own fingerprints. Late Baroque music, like Bach's, is built on counterpoint, with a steady driving rhythm and terraced dynamics. Early Classical music is lighter: a clear tune over a simple accompaniment. Late Classical music, like Mozart and Beethoven, is built on sonata form and contrasts between keys. Romantic music is about personal expression, rich harmony, rubato and a singing piano tone. And twentieth-century neo-Baroque, or neoclassical, music goes back to older forms and counterpoint, but with modern harmony. So where does my Bartók fit? The Romanian Folk Dances are from 1915, and I haven't found any source that calls them neo-Baroque. They belong to his early twentieth-century folk-music style: modal tunes, dance rhythms, drones and very simple harmony. Bartók actually described two ways of drawing on the past. One was relying on old peasant music. The other was taking ideas from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century art music, which he called neoclassicism. These dances take the first route. He only took the second route from about 1926, in pieces like Out of Doors and the First Piano Concerto, with much more counterpoint. So in my programme, the Bach is the real Baroque, and this Bartók looks back in a completely different direction: to the village, not to Bach.
this course's notes §1 (Vikárius, https://onlinepublishing.cini.it/index.php/arno/article/download/217/362/1256 ; Wikipedia "Neoclassicism (music)", "Romanian Folk Dances"); research notes §3 (1939 interview).
Say first: Bartók started as a late-Romantic composer in the style of Strauss, and ended with music where folk elements, classical forms and modern harmony are completely fused.
Bartók's early music is late-Romantic. As a student he loved Liszt, Brahms and especially Richard Strauss, and his tone poem Kossuth, from 1903, is big, patriotic orchestral music in Strauss's style. His First Violin Concerto, from 1907 and 1908, is still basically a late-Romantic concerto. Then folk music changed everything. Once he started collecting, from about 1905, he discovered old modes and irregular rhythms, and his style became sharper and more personal. You can hear that in the Allegro barbaro of 1911, with its hard, percussive piano writing. Around 1920 his music became very complex and dissonant; his two violin sonatas from 1921 and 1922 are among his most complex pieces. From about 1926 he looked back to older models, with more counterpoint, in works like the Piano Sonata and Out of Doors. His last works, written in America, like the Concerto for Orchestra, are clearer and more approachable. So I'd put the contrast like this: early on, folk music is only a colour, but late in life it has become his own language. My piece from 1915 sits in the middle, where the folk tune itself is the whole point.
research notes §4 (Wikipedia "Béla Bartók"; Encyclopedia.com; Boosey & Hawkes https://boosey.com/shop/work-info/Bartok-Violin-Concerto-1-Op-Posth/3419 ; Aspen https://www.aspenmusicfestival.com/program_notes/view/bartok-concerto-for-orchestra ); this course's notes §1 (Vikárius).
Say first: Bartók wrote for the modern grand piano, which is essentially the instrument I play, so the challenge is not the instrument's limits but its power and sustain.
Unlike Bach or Haydn, Bartók wrote for basically the same instrument we play today. By 1915 a concert grand had a cast-iron frame, heavy strings crossing over each other, felt-covered hammers and a strong sustaining pedal, so it was loud and had a long, rich sound. Bartók was a concert pianist himself and taught piano at the Budapest Academy for almost thirty years, so he knew the instrument from the inside. His piano writing often uses its percussive side, because the hammers really strike the strings. From the Allegro barbaro of 1911 onwards, that spiky, struck sound became typical of him. In the Romanian Folk Dances the piano imitates village instruments: a fiddle in most of the dances, and a peasant flute in numbers two and three. Because a modern piano sustains so much, the danger is that it sounds too rich and blurred. So I use very little pedal, keep the accents sharp and the left-hand chords short, a bit like a second fiddle or stamping feet, and I only let the sound bloom a little in the slow third dance. And we can still hear Bartók playing these dances himself, because he recorded them on a piano roll in the 1920s.
research notes §5 (Bartók Jr. Chronicle https://library.hungaricana.hu/en/view/MKI_SK_Bartok_EN/?pg=280 ; Henle preface; Deutsche Grammophon biography; Bartók Archives catalogue https://zti.btk.mta.hu/en/ba/bartok-compositions/folk-music ); this course §4, §7; this course §1.