Piano: An Easy Guide to Reading Music, Playing Your First Piece, Enjoying Your Piano

by Chris Coetzee

The piano has always been one of the most popular and appealing instruments, and one the with the richest and most varied body of music written specifically for it. This all-in-one approach to learning how to play provides an in-depth look at the piano's inner workings, exercises to develop fingering skills, and an explanation of essential terms. As beginners master the fundamentals, they'll pass through some of the most important periods of music, encounter key composers ranging from Mozart to Scott Joplin, and work on characteristic pieces for each era, complete with notes to aid playing and interpretation.

96 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2004

About the author

Chris Coetzee is a music educator, researcher, and multi-instrumentalist with a background in both music and the humanities. He holds degrees in Music and Language & Culture from Stellenbosch University and is pursuing further studies in Latin and education. A classically trained pianist since childhood, he also plays the organ, saxophone, cello, clarinet, violin, flute, harpsichord, and guitar, and is an experienced singer.
He has lectured in Organology at Stellenbosch and currently teaches Arrangement part-time. His teaching repertoire includes Music Theory, Piano, Organ, Singing, Latin, Mandarin, and Ancient Cultures. In addition to his teaching work, he is active as a music arranger, typesetter, and researcher. He is the author of a didactic series on musical instruments, published by New Holland.

Reviews

[Ness · Rating 4 out of 5]

good introduction to the piano and also to the history and development into the piano and why and how it is so popular today. I liked how it linked composers and the pieces they created to certain themes during the particular time period and sometimes even to the popular art movements at the time e.g. impressionism or romanticism.
thought it was interesting how Bach died from a stroke secondary to a cataract surgery.