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Classical period piano pieces

Music from about 1750 to 1820, the years of Haydn, Mozart, Clementi and Beethoven, when the piano took the harpsichord's place and composers began to write loud and soft into the music. Here are 72 pieces by 15 composers, easiest first. Each has easier versions made from the score itself (the right-hand melody alone, then with left-hand roots), so you can start a step down and play it as written later.

Pieces
72
Levels
2 to 6
Key signatures
4 flats to 4 sharps
Length
8 to 418 bars

Reading Classical music

A tune and its accompaniment: the right hand sings, the left keeps the harmony, often as an Alberti bass, a chord broken bottom, top, middle, top. Read the chord, not four notes.
Pieces here: Sonatina in C, Op. 20 No. 1: Allegro (Kuhlau, level 3); Sonatina in G (Attwood, level 3); Sonata in C, K. 545: I (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, level 5).

Phrases you can see: four bars that ask and four that answer, each ending on a cadence you can hear coming.
Pieces here: Minuet in F, K. 2 (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, level 3); Écossaise in G (Beethoven, level 3).

Loud and soft written in: p and f, crescendos and sudden accents (sf), which the new piano could play by touch.
Pieces here: Sonatina in C, Op. 36 No. 1: I (Clementi, level 3); Sonatina in C, Op. 36 No. 3: II (Clementi, level 3); Sonatina in F, Anh. 5 (Beethoven, level 3).

Forms that return: the rondo, whose tune comes back between episodes, the minuet and trio, and the theme and variations.
Pieces here: Little Rondo (Türk, level 3); Minuet and Trio in G, K. 1 (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, level 3); Ah vous dirai-je, Maman: Variation I (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, level 3); Rondo alla turca (Turkish March) (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, level 3).

What the scores print

Of each period's pieces in the library, the share whose score prints each kind of sign. Ornament signs fade after the Baroque, as composers wrote out what they wanted, and marks for loudness, pedal and speed grow through the Romantic period.

Baroque
1600–1750		Classical
1750–1820		Romantic
1820–1900		Early 20th century
1900–1945
Ornament signs (trill, mordent, turn)48%26%7%0%
Loud and soft (p, f, crescendo)20%60%78%67%
Pedal marks3%6%27%7%
Slowing and back (rit., a tempo)3%4%32%13%

Level 2

A tune over a simple left hand, mostly in one hand position.

Level 3

Both hands busy, the hand moves around, a sharp or flat or two.

Level 4

Real independence between the hands and more accidentals.

Level 5

The edge of early intermediate: dense textures, fast passages and far keys.

Level 6

Intermediate: the notes of level 5 at concert speed, held even from the first bar to the last.

Composers

Each composer is placed in one period, by when they were writing; one whose working life spans two is placed where most histories place them.

Clementi lived until 1832, but his sonatinas and most of his music belong to the Classical period.

Beethoven is placed with the Classical period, as most histories place him; his later music opened the way to the Romantics.

C. P. E. Bach, J. S. Bach's son, is placed with the Classical period, whose style his music helped to begin.

Kuhlau wrote his sonatinas in the 1810s and 1820s in the Classical style of Clementi's, and they are taught with them.

Hummel, Mozart's pupil, lived until 1837 and kept to the Classical style he learned from him.

Hymns, carols, popular songs, ragtime, teaching studies and traditional tunes aren't music of a period in this sense, so their composers aren't placed in one, and a hymn tune by a composer placed here is left out too. They have pages of their own: hymns, Christmas music, ragtime, studies and traditional tunes.

Other periods: Baroque piano pieces (1600–1750) · Romantic piano pieces (1820–1900) · Early 20th-century piano pieces (1900–1945)

Open a piece to print any of its versions free, or to play it at your MIDI keyboard with every note marked. New to reading? The level 2 sight-reading exercises are a good warm-up.