Kuhlau's Sonatina in C major, Op. 20 No. 1, first movement — the first piece in sonatina books the world over. C major, 4/4, 80 written bars, with a repeat over the first 31, so following the score you see the same lines come round twice — miss it the first time and it comes back. Three minutes nine, 1,485 notes, and not one pedal mark. The full piano score is on screen, note by note.
What this piece trains is scale runs, not expression
This piece is mostly scales. The right hand runs up and down while the left holds it with broken chords or single notes — and how well it is played comes down to how even those runs are.
First, make every note the same length. Runs stumble at the change of finger; practising slowly, put your attention on the note the thumb passes under, not on the fast part.
Second, do not let the left hand follow the right. It is the floor of pulse and harmony all the way through and its volume should stay level; the faster the right hand runs, the stiller the left should be.
Third, no pedal. There is not one pedal mark in this score, and a classical texture is meant to be joined by the fingers. Pedalling turns the runs to soup, and they are the last thing here that should blur.
Fourth, change something on the repeat. Play it as written the first time, then vary the dynamics — often skipped in lessons, but part of the performing convention of the period.
Fifth, the last three bars. Bar 109 has 22 notes, bar 110 drops to 9 and the last holds 5: the slowing is written in, so play it as it stands and do not add more.
As a score to follow: mostly white keys, a range of only B1 to C7, a shortest note of a tenth of a second and an average of 13 notes a bar — easy to keep up with for a piece at this tempo.
The tempo follows the printed 144 to the quarter: bar 1 carries Allegro with the metronome mark, so nothing is substituted.
We rate this 3 out of 5 to play, and 5 out of 5 for how often it is studied.
In three minutes the same opening arrives three times
The theme is there from the first bar: a square four-bar tune in the right hand over broken chords in the left. That relationship holds for the whole movement, without exception.
At 0:55 you hear exactly the same thing again — the repeat, the first thirty-one bars taken once more. Following the score, this is where you can check yourself against what you just read.
From 1:46 it moves into other keys and turns unsettled, shifting position constantly; it is the shortest stretch and the hardest to place.
At 2:16 the opening returns a third time, staying home now, and runs to the end.
The close is brisk: bar 109 makes one last climb and two bars later it is over.
It is easy background — bright, regular, no swings of mood — though the runs are busy enough that in a very quiet room it may feel loud. Good for mornings, for getting things done, or for something with a pulse.
80 written bars become 111
80 written bars with a repeat over the first 31, which opens out to 111 bars and 1,485 sounding notes, in 4/4 and C major, with no grace notes. The score carries 53 dynamics and 40 hairpins, and no pedal marks.
Bar counts run between 5 and 22, averaging 13.4, a very flat distribution.
In the expanded score bars 1 to 31 and 32 to 62 have identical bar-by-bar counts: the two passes of the repeat. The sequence 16, 21, 17, 21, 17, 22 at bars 24 to 29 recurs at bars 55 to 60 and again at 104 to 109 — three appearances of the same closing phrase.
From bar 63 comes the thinnest stretch (bar 62 has 8 notes, bar 63 has 11), and the least settled harmonically.
From bar 81 the count returns to between 10 and 19 as the opening phrase arrives for the third time.
The range is B1 to C7, just over five octaves, and the shortest note lasts 0.104 seconds.
Written for students, and still in the books two hundred years later
Kuhlau was a German composer working in Copenhagen in the early nineteenth century. At twenty-four he fled to Denmark to avoid Napoleon's conscription, and afterwards lived on teaching, operas and published piano music, supporting his parents and a whole household.
The three sonatinas of Op. 20 were written for his pupils. Piano lessons then needed sonatas in miniature — the frame of a sonata, with theme, development and return, at a length and difficulty a student could carry. Kuhlau wrote three sets, Opp. 20, 55 and 88, and they have sat in lesson books around the world ever since.
This is the first of them, first movement, and for most people the first sonatina they meet.
He knew Beethoven too: the two spent a long day drinking outside Vienna in 1825, after which Beethoven sent him a canon punning on his name.
In 1831 a fire at his house destroyed every unpublished manuscript. He died the following year at forty-six.
Two more in the same set, and other teaching pieces
Op. 20 holds three sonatinas; after this one come No. 2 in G and No. 3 in F, at much the same level, and this sonatina has a second and third movement of its own. None has been made yet.
The channel has two other staples of the teaching repertoire: Burgmüller's Arabesque, Op. 100 No. 2, a right-hand finger study under a minute, and Bach's Invention No. 1, BWV 772, with a line in each hand. Practised together the three cover runs, finger independence and two-part playing.
