La Candeur (25 Easy Studies, Op. 100 No. 1)

Background

Friedrich Burgmüller was born in Regensburg in 1806 into a musical family and moved to Paris in the early 1830s, where he made his career. He wrote light piano music, songs and music for the ballet, including the score for La Péri (1843), but today he is remembered mainly for his studies for young pianists.

His 25 Easy and Progressive Studies, Op. 100, were published in Paris around 1851, and the French title page describes them as composed and fingered for small hands. Each one has a title that sets a mood or a scene, such as The Hunt or The Swallow. They have stayed in constant use as a bridge between beginner books and the easier classics.

La Candeur is the first of the set. The French word means innocence or purity rather than frankness, and the music matches its name: an open, smiling tune in C major.

How to practise it

This arrangement is 38 bars long. It opens with an eight-bar phrase heard twice (bars 1 to 16): the right hand runs in eighth notes while the left holds a chord for a bar or two. From bar 17 the left hand gets a share of the moving notes, and bars 33 to 38 make a short ending.

Start with the right hand in bars 1 and 2. Each group of four notes lies under one hand position, with finger 5 on the top note and the thumb on the bottom one. Bar 2 is the same shape a fourth higher, so lift the whole hand and land on the new notes rather than stretching.

Many of these notes sit high above the staff, so read them by pattern. The left hand's chords in bars 1 to 16 only need to be pressed together and kept down; play them softly, like a cushion under the tune.

In bar 17 the hands move in opposite directions: the right falls F, D, C, B while the left rises G, B, C, D. It is the first time both hands run in eighth notes together, so practise it alone.

The trickiest spot is bar 21, which returns as bar 29. The right hand holds a high note, first G and then F sharp, while E flat, D and C move underneath it. Hold the top note with finger 5, play the others with 3, 2 and 1, and keep the held key down for its full two beats.

Build up the speed in stages: 60, 80 and 96, then the full 112 beats a minute. Aim for eighth notes as even as beads on a string, with no bump when the thumb plays, and let each phrase grow a little towards its middle and relax at its end.

Its companion, No. 2 in the same set, is the livelier Arabesque.