This week’s Centre Stage features a piece from an album which is a must for every aspiring pianist, and although it was intended for children it can be enjoyed by players of any age.
The piece
Title: Song of the Lark (Russian: Песня жаворонка), Op. 39 no. 22
Composer: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Date: 1878
Level: Intermediate (Grade 5 – ABRSM 2003-4)
Composer
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a Russian composer during the Romantic era – the Encyclopedia Britannica describes him as “the greatest Russian composer of all time.” He wrote 169 works for a variety of settings, including the rarely seen orchestral cannons featured in his 1812 Overture. While he enjoyed considerable fame and success during his lifetime Encyclopedia Britannica describes him as “the greatest Russian composer of all time” he suffered from repeated episodes of depression and struggled with concealing his sexuality from an unwelcoming society. He was inspired to write the Album for the Young by Schumann’s collection of the same name, since at the time there was not much music specifically written for children to play.
(Note: Tchaikovsky is a Russian name and not all Russian Cyrillic letters have an exact equivalent in the Latin alphabet used for English. There are a number of different systems used to transliterate non-Latin alphabets so you may find different spellings of names and piece titles – older books may use the spelling ‘Tchaikowsky’ and I’ve seen about 5 different ways to spell Pyotr, including just giving up and writing the English equivalent ‘Peter’.)
Title
The high pitch and soft but lively nature of this piece reflects the type of bird the piece is named after. Imagine a bird tweeting and the way they hop around on the ground with quick sharp movements, while still gliding smoothly through the air.
Structure
The key signature is G major, so we are looking out for F#, and the time signature is 3/4 so make sure you are counting 3 beats in a bar and not stretching it out to 4. The left hand frequently moves into the treble clef; you may want to circle where the clef changes to remind yourself when you need to switch between them.
A quaver-semiquaver triplet rhythmic motif is found very frequently in the piece, with the left hand mainly playing chords on the beat. Take extra care with the 4-note chords and the chords with the accidentals in bars 16-19.
The piece is firmly in the treble range, with notes as high as 4 ledger lines above the stave. Notes this high do not appear very often as many composers will use ottava lines before that point (also found in this piece – bar 12 has an ottava line over a note which is already 3 ledger lines above the stave) but it is still useful to be able to read them. If you get stuck use C6, on the line 2 lines above the stave, as a reference point.
Technique
There are a lot of places where you need to play soft staccato, so make sure your fingers are kept close to the keys and you do not land on the notes from a great height. Staccato marks only affect the length of the note at the end and not the attack force at the beginning, which is especially crucial when you have a legato sign leading up to that staccato note.
Acciaccaturas (small notes with a line through them) are played on the beat as quickly as possible, as if your finger has momentarily slipped from another key to the main note. Some of these are marked pp so again you should take care not to land hard on the keys when you play that ‘squashed’ note (as one of my violin teachers described it).
Links
Score: https://imslp.org/wiki/Children%27s_Album%2C_Op.39_(Tchaikovsky%2C_Pyotr)
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