Schumann and Tchaikovsky: pieces that paint a scene
Romantic composers wrote a great many short, titled pieces for children and the home. Schumann's Album for the Young, Op. 68 (1848), and Tchaikovsky's Children's Album, Op. 39 (1878), are the best known. Each piece paints one scene or mood, which makes them ideal for thinking less about the fingers and more about the sound you make.
The path adds one task per piece - the melody inside a chord, a melody sung by the left hand, short detached chords, the space between notes, the bounce of 6/8 - and ends with two pieces from Kinderszenen, Op. 15, which Schumann wrote for adults looking back on childhood.
The title is a clue to the playing. Before you start, settle on one picture the title suggests; when you finish, ask whether your sound conveyed it.
- Who it is for
- For players past a first method book who can manage short pieces hands together. It can run alongside "The classic first pieces after a method book".
- Where it takes you
- The habit of reading a piece's character from its title and choosing a tone to match - and Träumerei, with rubato of your own.
The pieces, in order
What this piece teaches
The first piece of Tchaikovsky's Children's Album: G major, triple time, four-voice chords moving quietly like a chant. The lesson is letting the top note of each chord - the melody - sound a shade above the rest.
How to practise it
- At 0.5x, play only the top note of each chord as a melody first, then add the other notes underneath.
- Change the pedal with each new chord so nothing carries over - but start without it, joining the chords with the fingers alone.
- It opens a set that follows a child through one day. Build no big climax; let it stay quiet to the end.
What this piece teaches
"The Happy Farmer". F major, 4/4, with the tune in the left hand and the right hand accompanying in chords - the usual roles reversed, and practice in singing in the low register.
How to practise it
- This file has an empty second track, so the left hand falls in the third colour, purple. Follow only the purple notes, and get the tune singing in the left hand alone before adding the right.
- Keep the right-hand chords short and light, always a level below the tune.
- Put the hands together at 0.75x and listen for whether the right-hand chords are covering the left-hand tune.
What this piece teaches
Tchaikovsky's "March of the Wooden Soldiers". D major, duple time: short, clipped chords in strict tempo, drawing the stiff tread of toy soldiers. After joined chords, these are cut short.
How to practise it
- Keep the wrist loose and release the chords lightly from the fingertips. Pressing with the arm makes them hard and heavy.
- Turn on beat lines and check that the tempo neither rushes nor drags.
- Keep the whole piece fairly quiet. What makes them toys is the exact rhythm, not the volume.
What this piece teaches
"First Loss". E minor, 2/4. With so few notes, the weight of each one and the way each phrase ends are the expression itself. The lesson is the small wait - a moment of space before the next note.
How to practise it
- Learn it in steady time first, then decide where to wait. Bend it from the start and the waits land somewhere different every time.
- Set the last note of each phrase down softly, quieter than the one before. Loop just the phrase endings with A-B and repeat them.
What this piece teaches
"Reaper's Song". C major, 6/8, with recurring syncopations - accents off the beat - in a bouncing picture of the harvest.
How to practise it
- Count 6/8 as two big beats to the bar. If the syncopations make you lose the beat, listen at 0.75x and count along.
- Loop any passage where the rhythm wavers, clap it through on its own, and only then play it.
- Use the colours - blue for the right hand, and purple for the left, since the second track is empty - to see which hand plays on each main beat; knowing that keeps the rhythm from slipping.
What this piece teaches
The first piece of Kinderszenen, Op. 15, "Of Foreign Lands and Peoples". G major, duple time: the right hand sings quietly above left-hand broken chords. In places triplets in one hand meet duple figures in the other - practice in playing two rhythms at once.
How to practise it
- Repeat the left hand alone until its broken chords run in an even stream.
- When the hands go together, line up only the beats and do not try to count the notes in between. At 0.5x, watch the falling notes meet on each beat.
- In the score view, find where the opening tune comes back at the end, and decide whether to play it differently the second time.
What this piece teaches
The goal of this path: Träumerei. F major, 4/4: a short theme returning again and again in changing keys and harmonies. There is little technically hard in it; the task is deciding for yourself how to bend the tempo and how much of the inner voices to let through.
How to practise it
- First play it through in strict time; only then decide where you want to spend time.
- Each time the theme returns, find in the falling notes where the melody reaches its highest note, and think about how to place that one note.
- This piece has no score view. Practise with your own copy of the score beside the falling notes.
The routine every path shares
- Listen through once with the falling notes to get the shape of the whole piece.
- Slow it to around 0.5x and learn the notes and fingering one hand at a time.
- Cut out the hard spots with the A-B loop and repeat them until they run without a stop.
- Put the hands together and bring the speed back up a little at a time.
- Log the time and what you noticed in the practice journal - it is where you pick up next time.
Other paths
The classic first pieces after a method book
Bach's minuets, Schumann's and Tchaikovsky's Albums for the Young, and on to Clementi's sonatina.
- Album for the Young Op.68 No.1 "Melody"
- Menuet in G major, BWV Anh. 114
- Menuet in G minor, BWV Anh. 115
- Album for the Young Op.68 No.2 "Soldiers' March"
- …
From Burgmüller's 25 Etudes to Für Elise
One technique per piece: twelve numbers from a collection Japanese piano teachers swear by, ending with Für Elise.
- No.1 La Candeur
- No.2 L'Arabesque
- No.3 La Pastorale
- No.4 La Petite Réunion
- …
Sonatinas and Inventions, on to a Mozart sonata
Kuhlau, Beethoven, Bach, Chopin: the intermediate standards, leading to every movement of Mozart's K. 545.
- Sonatine Op.20 No.1: I. Allegro
- Piano Sonata No.20 Op.49-2 - II. Tempo di Menuetto
- Piano Sonata No.20 Op.49-2 - I. Allegro ma non troppo
- Invention No.1 in C major
- …
From Bach's little pieces to the Inventions and Sinfonias
A fingering study written for his son, a minuet from the Anna Magdalena Notebook, two little preludes, then two-part Inventions and a three-part Sinfonia.
- Applicatio
- Minuet in A minor
- Praeludium 2
- Petite Prélude No. 9
- …
First Chopin: from the Preludes to the Nocturnes
Short preludes first, then a posthumous waltz and nocturne, the "Raindrop" Prelude, and the Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2.
- Prelude Op.28 No.7 in A major
- Prelude Op.28 No.20 in C minor "Funeral March"
- Prelude Op.28 No.6 in B minor
- Waltz Op.69 No.2 in B minor (Posthumous)
- …
Satie to Debussy: sound, space and the pedal
From the quiet of the Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes to Debussy's First Arabesque and Clair de Lune.
- Gymnopédie No. 1
- Gnossienne No. 1
- Gymnopédie No. 3
- Gnossienne No. 3
- …