would someone please email me with a useful guide on how to tell what period a piece is from? ie baroque etc.
thanks##or post it here

enlightenmentt@hotmail.com

Those runny pieces with each hand playing their own part (or contrapuntally) or those jiggy pieces in a proper key with lots of octaves (mostly LH) and perfect cadences are baroque. No dramatic shifts of dynamics here.

Classical- RH melody, LH accompaniment mostly. Scalic passages or LH alberti bass (C-G-E-G patterns) or broken chords or small block chords. More rhythmic than baroque and some pedal and some dynamic contrasts. Modulation mostly tonic to dominant.

Romantic- Bigger chords for accompaniment or long arpeggios. More dramatic moods, shifts of colour or expression. Definitely lots of pedal. Triplets, some chromatism. Might change to distant keys. Rubato. Or a piece which tells a story. Wider range of keyboard/notes used.

Modern- Many styles. Like Jazz, Tango, as well as like wild shifts of time signature, complicated rhythms, very chromatic (Bartok) or even two keys being played at the same time! 12 tone scales being used, (Schoenberg) or pentatonic, dream-like (Debussy). The key sense is not so strict.

thanks

what about tonality?

what about texture?

Hi, Asyoulikeit,

Unfortunately the only way to "get fluent" is to listen to a few good examples of each genre (and play some if you can). Work, I know, but it's the only way.

R