Baroque Real Repertoire: Piano

A journey through the baroque keyboard workshop. You encounter elegant dances, witty imitations of birdsong, technical studies disguised as musical ideas, and intimate character pieces alongside more ambitious sonata forms. The collection captures both the social music of the court and the intellectual rigor of composers testing the keyboard's possibilities.

Intermediate pianists who are ready to move beyond early baroque arrangements and engage with the original keyboard literature. Students working through graded repertoire collections benefit from having multiple composers and forms side by side, rather than studying one master at a time.

• Approach the French ornaments and trills in Couperin and Rameau as structural moments, not decorative flourishes. Let them breathe and shape the phrase.
• In the Scarlatti sonatas, maintain clarity between hand parts even when the writing becomes rapid and texture-heavy. Single-line independence prevents muddy sound.
• Use the continuo and suite pieces (Handel's Sarabande, the Daquin and Rameau programmatic miniatures) to develop sustained tone and voice leading before tackling faster passagework.
• Notice how Bach's Invention differs from his other keyboard works here. Its two-voice counterpoint teaches clarity and balance that transfers directly to the more complex textures in the Toccata.

These pieces work well scattered across a season of recitals, or grouped thematically in a single concert exploring baroque keyboard idioms. Shorter works like Le coucou and Le rappel des oiseaux serve as encores or palate cleansers between larger works, while the Scarlatti and Arne sonatas anchor full-length student recital programs.

• Reading and executing French ornaments (trills, mordents, turns) with historical awareness
• Maintaining independence between hands in two-voice counterpoint
• Identifying and performing dance rhythms characteristic of baroque suite forms
• Balancing ornamental figuration with singing melodic lines
• Understanding keyboard texture from the harpsichord era and adapting it for the modern piano
• Developing finger independence and clarity at moderate tempos and in rapid passagework