Week 1 Thread: Exploring the 18th Century!
Welcome to the Main Thread for the third week of "Mozart & Haydn - Music from the 18th Century" challenge!
- Make sure you've read the guidelines before replying (<- click)
- Watch the kickoff livestream! (<- click)
Most of the time, the music for keyboard instruments written during the 18th century is defined as simple, pleasing, and overall superficial. And yet, the works written during this period contain the seeds for the development of larger musical forms.
This week we will start looking at music from a different perspective and consider the musical elements as building blocks of a structure that is meant to communicate a message.
Pick a piece from the suggested repertoire according to your level or share any piece written during the 18th century that you have been working on!
Post in the forum what you discovered playing your piece and your goals for this challenge!
If you want to describe your process, feel free to use the following template.
- Piece(s) you have been working on:
- Things you found easy:
- Things you found difficult:
Happy sharing 
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I love to play Mozart, but it's so difficult! I thought I was playing well until I started to record.
The challenge for me is to keep steady tempo. I always start slow and then speed up as I play. in this recording I start to rush at the very beginning on those trills. maybe I need to practice more with metronome!
Evenness is another challenge.
And left hand! it's hard to play soft at for example the piano parts like at 0:54, when the right hand comes down on volume but left hand did not match up.
What is easy is to learn the notes I guess. But that's not very useful if notes are learned but not played well!
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Monika Tusnady thank you Monica! I love the opening, it's like out of nowhere lol. I like your storyline
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Antonella Di Giulio Thank you for giving the wonderful advice to me! I like the analogy of slow motion of movie. Funny that I watch most of youtube videos at fast speed like x2 (not music of course), and when I play slow speed on something, it is usually full of intention and focus!
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Qingzhi when you watch is different because you are not intentionally creating something.
The depth of an artisti is in the attention to the details
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Qingzhi great playing!
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Monika Tusnady Ah ha! So you spent time in my son's playroom when he was a little kid? LOL!
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Gail Starr Yes! He’s changed, though, into a perfect adult.
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Qingzhi Sounds great, full of energy and vitality!
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Here the Adagio of KV 332 without the extra ornaments. still a lot of room for improvement. The recording shows every insecurity without mercy
(not to talk about wrong notes). -
Andrea Buckland Sounds great! Such a magical movement. The Adagio is a very difficult movement, and you are well on your way.
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Andrea Buckland Beautiful Andrea! Love this adagio.
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Andrea Buckland beautiful sound and very nice phrasing!
One of the ways you can give a bit more sense of belonging to the notes in the same phrase is to imagine that somebody is trying to pull your hand away from the piano, while you try to keep your fingers glued to the keyboard.
I am not sure what edition you are using, but for example on the first third of the quatrains in measures10-11 I have a sfp. It would actually be very beautiful to play those sforzato at that point.
great job!!! It is such a difficult and very beautiful piece!
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Andrea Buckland My FAVORITE Mozart Adagio. Lovely!
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Antonella Di Giulio I love the idea of somebody trying to pull your hand away!
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Gail Starr it has all to do with how we connect a sound to the next :)
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Antonella Di Giulio many thanks for this great advice! I tried it and it feels so much better!
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Gail Starr how can anyone not just love Mozart? I feel so blessed that I can spend time with this music.
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Vidhya Bashyam thanks, Vidhya!
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Sindre Skarelven thank you very much, Sindre!
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Andrea this music truly takes my breath away, again and again. It’s meant to do that, isn’t it, with the sudden turn to minor, then the equally surprising return to the major - moments of tenderness that words could not begin to express. Thank you for your musical offering.
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Andrea Buckland I love this piece - great job!
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Susan Rogers thank you, Susan!
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Andrea Buckland I agree 100%!
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Andrea Buckland Beautiful, with that point of melancholy of some of the arias of Mozart! Wonderful Andrea!
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I'm going to be working on a more serious piece, a Haydn Sonata in D Major, but I thought this little Mozart piece was so funny I had to upload it. Here is: Funeral March for Signor Maestro Counterpoint.
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Thurmond R waiting for your Haydn!
Keep in mind that a funeral March should keep a bit slower tempo
thank for playing it for us.
It is a fun piece to play.
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