Early Keyboard Music, Volume II: Piano Book

These pieces unfold with the precision and ornamentation of music shaped by hand rather than sentiment. There is elegance in constraint, clarity in counterpoint, and a sense of discovery as you navigate passages that feel both carefully constructed and intimately personal.

Advanced piano students and serious amateurs seeking substantial repertoire that connects them directly to Renaissance and Baroque keyboard traditions. Teachers building comprehensive recital programs want repertoire that educates audiences about keyboard history while showcasing their students' technical maturity and historical awareness.

• Approach ornamentation as integral to the phrasing rather than decorative. Early keyboard composers embedded ornaments into the melodic and harmonic structure, so allow them to breathe naturally within the phrase architecture.
• Attend carefully to texture and registration. Even though you're playing piano, imagine how these pieces would have sounded on their original instruments; that awareness informs pedal choices and voicing decisions.
• Shape longer lines with subtle dynamic inflection rather than dramatic contrasts. The instruments these pieces were written for had limited dynamic range, and honoring that restraint maintains the music's authenticity.

Program selections from this volume alongside standard Baroque keyboard works (Bach, Scarlatti) to establish historical context and show the breadth of early keyboard music beyond what students typically encounter. A themed recital exploring keyboard idioms across centuries gains particular weight when pieces are drawn from this collection, as they represent composers less frequently heard in concert.

• Interpreting Renaissance and Baroque ornamentation
• Balancing counterpoint across multiple voices
• Understanding keyboard idiom across different historical instruments
• Applying period-appropriate articulation and phrasing
• Reading and executing complex early keyboard notation
• Sustaining musical line through sparse harmonic texture