Early Italian Keyboard Music: 49 Works by Frescobaldi, Scarlatti, Martini and Others: Piano Book

You're stepping into the keyboard workshop of seventeenth and eighteenth century Italy, where composers were still defining what the keyboard could do. The music sparkles with invention, clarity, and architectural precision. There's drama in the toccatas, intellectual satisfaction in the fugues, and elegant charm in the sonata movements.

Advanced high school pianists and conservatory students ready to engage seriously with pre-Classical keyboard writing. This collection also serves music history students who need authoritative texts and teachers assembling a curriculum that moves beyond Romantic repertoire.

• Study the ornamentation carefully before playing through. Italian composers of this era notated ornaments with specific intentions, and clarity in execution separates a delightful performance from a muddled one.
• Pay close attention to hand independence in the toccatas and fugues. These works demand true counterpoint, not accompaniment figures; think of each hand as a complete melodic voice.
• Use the form labels and structure of each piece as a learning tool. Recognizing where one section ends and the next begins helps with phrasing and prevents the work from feeling like an unbroken stream of notes.
• Address the technical demands of the harpsichord idiom honestly. Many of these pieces were conceived for harpsichord, so repeated notes, rapid scale passages, and the clarity of line matter more than sustaining pedal.

Pair individual pieces with a recital program that explores Baroque and Classical forms without requiring a full sonata. The shorter works make excellent recital openers or palate cleansers between larger Romantic compositions. For a musician diving into early music studies, this anthology provides essential exposure to the foundational language students will encounter in period performance.

• Baroque articulation and ornamentation style
• Voice leading in contrapuntal writing
• Recognizing and executing toccata, fugue, and sonata forms
• Harpsichord keyboard idiom and technique
• Stylistic differences between seventeenth and eighteenth century composition