[Scores] Gurlitt: The first lessons op.117

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This is a free and good material for beginners who has one year experience of learning piano. I have good experience with one of my students who is willing to play no.15 on his own.


At the very beginning, I assigned him no.5. This exercise only requires both hands on C position. He started with learning right hand. He learned counting by crotchet as 1 and 2 quavers as 1 n.

There are a few whole bar rest for left hand. It is quite easy for him. He counted both minim notes and rests as 1-2.

When he finally came to two hands together, he had trouble playing quavers in the speed of half count. That sounds like three crotchets in a bar. So I introduced quavers as 1-2 with clapping.

First I clapped for crotchets 4 times. Then followed by quavers rhythm for 4 times. Finally ended with clapping crotchet for another round. Then I clapped the right hand rhythm from no.5.

I asked him to clap and count it out and write the counting down on his scores. Until here, he has theoretically understood. But when he came to playing, his fingers could not change as fast as he clapped for quavers. However, the music he played has some improvement.

The whole process lasts no longer than 8 minutes. I think that is enough for him to practice on his own at home. So I moved on to another piece with him.

The next week he came, he could play most of the piece. However, bar 13 and 14 sounded a little slower and not as smooth. I decided to coach just a little bit because I wanted to move on to no.6. I closed the lid of the piano. I showed him playing with right hand on the lid. This was to focus on changing our fingerings. His problem was to change from last note of bar 13 onto first note of bar 14. That fingering was a 5th to a 2nd. So we repeated for about 4 times. Then we got back to playing on the piano keys. When coming to that two bars, I could see that he showed his effort moving his fingers as fast as he did on the lid. Even though it was not the best but he seemed to be happy and repeatedly playing for another 2 rounds. And that was it for no.5.