Hi there,

I'm a bit of a lurker here (posting on the Adult Learner board). I've just taken my Grade 5 for Piano after a 22year gap. Bit nervewracking but I'm still glad I decided to learn again. Having a break before Grade 6 and expanding my repetoire by playing everything I can get my hands on.

To get to my point. In amongst all my old piano music from years ago I have unearthed the rather daunting but beautiful Beethoven sheet music for Moonlight Sonata and I was wondering what the opinion was on the grade level.

My ultimate goal is to be able to play this beautiful piece but I don't want to get ahead of myself and end up taking backward steps. If its Grade 8 standard then I'll put it back into the pile for a few years . If however, the general consensus is that a potential Grade 6er should be able to tackle it (or some of it) then I'm game for giving it a go.

Thanks for reading
Lynda

1st movement - 5/6 but requires that extra special something to make it unique (harder than it looks too! especially with bringing out the melody in the right hand)

2nd movenet - 7, former Grade 7 piece

3rd movement - DipABRSM Extremely dexterous technique needed here!

I think this is the most debated grade level piece on the forums .

The whole thing is on the DipABRSM syllabus, the final movement is the trickiest technically as I-L says. At grade 5 standard you should be able to play through the notes of the first movement without too much issue; making it musical there's an endless scale, as one improves one will always play it better. Depending on how musical you are at grade 5 you may struggle musically but I think it's one of those pieces that if one waits until one can do it justice one will never play it.... I guess what I'm saying is yes you'll probably manage the notes okay, interpretation you could wait for ever, so just do it when you feel ready and are happy with the standard that you'll achieve .

I know an amazing pianist (not too far from here) who has a music degree and still doesn't think they can do this piece justice ; although I'm sure they can .

I seem to be on your tail here, AP, en route down the viva piano topics tonight!

I think there is a distinction between pleasing yourself and pleasing your audience. I'm quite sure the person you have in mind would please his audience, but it's also important to please yourself. If I play something for someone before it has reached a stage that I'm happy with myself, and they say "That was wonderful" I feel almost aggravated. I can't quite explain why, so I'm not going to try in case I tie myself in knots! With regard to the Moonlight Sonata, this is a piece which I feel depends very much on an excellent instrument in accoustic surroundings for true success. (As well as the pianist, obviously!) And if you open the curtains and turn off the light on a moonlit night it will help too! As for grade, I imagine that it wouldn't be too hard to pass for a grade 6 player, but I doubt if there'd be many distinctions unless the pianist was playing below his grade - relevant to another thread that I've just replied to!

I find it very hard to play this one. I'm trieng, but I just can't play the first page

I can't reach octaves anyway, so I need to wait

There's no need to explain I understand, it's most often the case that the hardest person to please is oneself, particularly the better one gets. The beginner will almost always find their teacher harder to please than themself: they haven't developed enough musically to understand the mistakes yet; a professional, on the other hand, can delight a packed concert hall but still not be pleased with their performance: they are the person most in touch with it. A bit of a dilema really one never gets any better in one's own mind because the better one gets the more one realises on still has to learn....

My teacher would make me learn this if I could reach octaves.




I know an amazing pianist my age in japan who can play this very well.




This sonata is one of very few classical music I know the theme for all 3 movememts

I didn't perform the Moonlight until 2 years ago - roughly 25 years after first being able to 'get through' the notes of the first movement. Why? Because it's incredibly difficult to get the interpretation and the fine control of expression and balance that's needed for every note and I didn't feel I could do it enough justice before........

1st movement - 5/6 but requires that extra special something to make it unique (harder than it looks too!

The notes are no problem, but you're right about needing that 'extra special something'. Musically, i think it would be about grade 7/8 standard and beyond, and like someone mentioned, this is one of those pieces that can only get better with experience. I played this last year, and the mood of the first movement is just so hard to maintain!

Exactly.

In the third movement, when concentrating on expression - hello to wrong notes , when trying to concentrate on getting it right technically - it sounds very shallow and not expressive at all.

It took me ages to finally get it right ..

Hah.
My piano teacher told me the 1st mvoement was grade 3 He's an excellent teacher but he doesn't have much of an idea with grades because he hasn't entered anyone for a very long time. But I actually believed him, because i've played so much hard repetoire now that I find the first movement very very easy.

Anyone who says the first movement is easy clearly doesn't understand the first movement properly......

I think so
My dad would class it as G8 because of the expression etc. needed to play it proporly.

Interesting! Would you say that the popularity of the piece was the major factor in not feeling like you could do it justice?

Nope - I'm just a perfectionist.........

I once sight-read the first movement in a Piano store, and everyone thought that I had been playing it for 6months

Quite... It's true for most pieces actually....

I need to be in a certain mood to play the first movement... I'm not sure what exactly that mood is, but the notion has to take me, somehow, before I play it well. (I'm sure that made a lot of sense )

I'm halfway through the 3rd movement. To be honest, it's killing me. Whoever mentioned earlier about getting wrong notes when you put the drama in, and no drama when it's technically right, was spot on!

I try not to play it (3rd mvt) when anyone's listening. It's definately not at performance level yet, and as someone else said, everytime someone says "oh, that was good!" I feel like jumping off the seat and shouting "are you deaf?" - or I get suspicious that they're being sarcastic

I never get tired of trying though.

xxx

I play the "Moonlight.." possibly twice or three times a week. I'd say it is definitely Grade 8 +, even the so called easy 1st movement. I agree with most of the comments about being in the right "mood", it's a very "moody" piece reflecting, I think, the depths and heights of Beethoven's feelings and angst at the time he wrote it.

I have about 40 or 50 pieces of music on the go at various stages of learning and/or completion. My method is to "shuffle" the scores randomly, sit them in a pile on the piano and then work my way through the pile one score at a time. If I have a lot of time to spare I can get through quite a few between 7.00pm and midnight with a 45 minute break for supper. In abusy work week I may only manage a couple of hours a night.

I used the first movement as therapy when a friend of mine died...it still holds very powerful memories for me. I can understand why people can only play it in a particular mood.

I can understand that! You're not looking for approval for yourself; you're looking for approval of the music which you'd like to share, and there's nothing worse than somebody just not getting it.

Good luck with the third movement - I'd love to play that some day.

I just hate it when people set a 'grade' for a particular piece when its blatantly not true. Its like saying that one piece is harder that another.... although there are pieces which are obviously easier than others...

That's why I like this forum! It's nice to be understood by people who share the same feelings about music.

Regarding what pizza1512 mentioned about grading. As you get into the higher grades, it gets more difficult to distinguish, especially when players develop a taste for a particular style, and thus find this style easier than others. I don't think any piece at grade 8+ could be described as easy. It may be easy to get all the notes in the right order, but to perform it well takes a lot more effort.

xxx

Sorry, I couldnt help thinking of Eric Morecambe's comment to Andre Previn, 'But I was playing the all the right notes .................................but not necessarily in the right order'

I find classical sonatas easier than baroque music of the same standard

Not always...

I find the opposite is mostly true for me. In general I feel more comfortable with Baroque.

So in our cases, the piece I'd view as more difficult might be the one you'd go for - providing the standard was roughly the same.

As long as I like the piece though, it's worth playing no matter what grade has been assigned to it.

xxx

(Speaking of pieces I like - how's Rumba Toccata going Liz?)

1st mvt- I thought it was a former Grade8 piece
2nd- really?? I didn't know that, but agrees.
3rd- true....but it's not that hard....

I've got a pupil playing the first movement at the moment. The beginning was painful - but she was desperate to play it, it's now flowing better. It's done wonders for her pedal work and her overall understanding of the piece. There's no way I'd let her do more tha the first movemnet for a long while - I haven't been teaching her long and her last teacher didn't teach her to read the bass clef... teachers like that shouldn't be allowed!

Kx

In regards to pedalling for this piece, my tutor tells me both pedals are depressed throughout the first movement. I play it this way, and it does have a good sound, but do others do the same?

No: it says at the top of the score senza sordini i.e. without mute so that's an explicit instruction not to use the soft pedal. (Presumably by Beethoven although I wasn't looking at an Urtext edition, but the two editions I've seen agree).

I assume that by 'both pedals depressed throughout the first movement' you are still releasing the sustain pedal at chord changes, not literally holding it down throughout ? If not then don't hold the sustain pedal down all the time, or it will sound murky .

According to Ferguson, senza sordini actually means "without dampers" - Beethoven was actually asking for the sustain pedal to be held down throughout - which of course is impossible on a modern piano, but which would have worked fine on a piano of his day. (Ferguson Keyboard Interpretation book......)