Preparatory School, Op. 101 No. 18
Ferdinand Beyer (1803–1863) · sheet music
- Time 3/4
- Levels 2–3
- Passages 5
Your turn · both hands
Preparing your passage…
Ferdinand Beyer, German romantic (1803–1863). The reading release has 5 passages from this piece at levels 2–3; the reader above opens on the easiest, bars 5–8 for the right hand alone.
The hardest stretch is bars 1–4 at level 3.
Your practice path
Learn it the way teachers do: each hand on its own, then together, then the hard bars. Each step is a real graded passage of Preparatory School, Op. 101 No. 18.
- Right hand alone · bars 5–8 level 2
- The hardest bars · bars 1–4 level 3
How to play Preparatory School, Op. 101 No. 18
- Tempo:Allegretto in the Peters edition: a light, flowing three, but slow enough that the leap to G is never snatched.
- Right hand:Thumb on C, fingers 2 and 3 on D and E, and finger 5 resting over G from the start, so the leap is just a change of finger, not a hand movement.
- Left hand:Beyer's left-hand part sets thumb on G and finger 3 on E, or finger 2 on F, and holds each two-note chord for three counts; press both keys exactly together.
- Hands together:Keep the left-hand chord down for the whole bar while the right hand plays three quarter notes above it, then change both hands together on the next downbeat.
- Practice:Practice C-G-G slowly on its own, dropping from the thumb to finger 5 and repeating the G with a small lift, then put it back into the phrase.
- Reading:Read the left-hand chords by shape: E and G sit on neighboring lines, F and G on a space and a line, so you can spot the change at a glance.
Common mistakes
- Releasing the left-hand chord after one or two counts. Fix: Count three aloud and lift only on the next downbeat.
- Blurring the two G's into one long note. Fix: Lift finger 5 slightly between them so both are heard.
- Playing the leap with finger 4 and landing on F. Fix: Keep finger 4 unused; finger 5 always takes G.
- Coming in with the left hand during the bar where it rests. Fix: Mark the silent bar in the left hand and count it.
Structure: rounded binary (second half repeated)
An eight-bar first half, built from a stepwise turn and the leap to G, is followed by a repeated second half that presses on the leap twice before returning to the opening's stepwise phrases.
- A · Steps and a leap
- C-D-E, E-D-C, D-E-D, then C jumps up to two G's; the phrase repeats and settles on a dotted half note C.
- B · The leap twice
- D-E-D followed by C-G-G, played twice, while the left hand keeps its held chords.
- A · Return
- The stepwise opening comes back with the left hand now in moving quarter notes, ending on C before the repeat.
About Preparatory School, Op. 101 No. 18
No. 18 is the first piece on this page of the Peters edition in three beats to a bar. Its hand-position chart gives the right hand C, D, E, and G with fingers 1, 2, 3, and 5, leaving out F, and the left hand C, E, F, and G.
The right hand moves by step in quarter notes, C-D-E and back, until a skip from C up to two repeated G's, played with the fifth finger. Underneath, the left hand holds two-note chords, E with G or F with G, for a whole bar at a time.
In the repeated second half, the right hand's leap to the repeated G's comes twice, each time after a D-E-D turn. Then, after a bar in which the left hand is silent, the left hand switches to single quarter notes, G-F-E, moving against the right hand's C-D-E, before both close on C.
- The Peters chart for No. 18 shows only four right-hand notes, C, D, E, and G; F never appears in the right hand.
- The two G's after the leap are both marked with finger 5, so the same finger plays the repeated note.
- Near the end, the left hand's G-F-E against the right hand's C-D-E is a small lesson in contrary motion, the hands moving toward each other.
Why the first passage is level 2
That passage is level 2 rather than 1 because it is in 3/4, not 4/4, it has dotted rhythms.
Three beats per bar, no sharps or flats, and mostly stepwise quarter notes; level three adds the leap from C to repeated G's and the held dotted half note.
Questions about Preparatory School, Op. 101 No. 18
- How hard is Preparatory School, Op. 101 No. 18 to play?
- Its passages grade from level 2 to level 3 on Real Sight Reader's ten-level reading scale, which keeps all of it within beginner reading. The hardest stretch is bars 1–4 at level 3.
- Is there an easy part of Preparatory School, Op. 101 No. 18 for beginners?
- Yes. Start with bars 5–8 for the right hand alone, the level-2 passage in the reader at the top of this page; it is level 2 because it is in 3/4, not 4/4 and it has dotted rhythms.
- What key and time signature is Preparatory School, Op. 101 No. 18 in?
- The engraving on this page is in 3/4 time.
- Who composed Preparatory School, Op. 101 No. 18?
- Ferdinand Beyer, German romantic (1803–1863). No.
- Can I practice Preparatory School, Op. 101 No. 18 online for free?
- Yes. The reader on this page plays any of the 5 graded passages from Preparatory School, Op. 101 No. 18 in your browser, with an on-screen keyboard or a MIDI keyboard, and marks every note as you play. No signup.
- How long does No. 18 take to play?
- The PTNA Piano Music Encyclopedia lists about 40 seconds.
- Why does the hand chart for No. 18 leave out F?
- The right hand only uses C, D, E, and G in this piece, so the Peters chart shows just those four notes and their fingers.
- Is Beyer's Op. 101 in the public domain?
- Yes. Beyer died in 1863, and IMSLP lists old editions such as Peters and Schirmer as public domain.
Every passage, easiest first
The reading release grades 5 distinct passages of this piece. Open any of them in the reader:
- Level 2
- bars 5–8 right hand
- Level 3
- bars 1–4 right hand · bars 1–8 right hand · bars 9–12 right hand · bars 9–16 right hand
More pieces to sight-read
Score: public-domain engraving from the corpus (imslp-omr), graded by the piano-reading-v2-20261023-identity-audit reading release.