This series of easy piano pieces for teaching purposes presents pupils in the early and early-middle stages with a careful selection from well-known and less-known compositions by important masters. The individual volumes are deliberately kept small in compass, since it is more stimulating for children if the literature used for instruction is changed frequently.

Whereas the keyboard music of J. S. Bach represents one of the high points of his creative output, that of Handel is overshadowed by his operas, oratorios and orchestral works. About 20 suites, a few fugues, chaconnes and other keyboard pieces have been preserved.

The style of these works is fundamentally different from that of Bach’s works. Handel’s keyboard compositions require the interpreter to take a more active, creative and improvizatory role in the realization of the pieces, and thus to have a developed stylistic sense for baroque keyboard technique (= harpsichord technique) in the widest sense. This may be the main reason for the fact that these imaginative and immensely lively works are scarcely used in teaching. A further reason for this neglect is the absence of suitable editions.

The present keyboard pieces present a cross-section through the musical forms of the baroque keyboard literature. They are of different degrees of difficulty, and – especially because of the need for a fluent rendering of the ornaments – should not be introduced too early in the pupil’s studies. (A suitable stage might be after he or she has mastered Bach’s two-part inventions.)

Handel gives no indications of modes of attack and articulation, phrasing, tempi or dynamics; even the decorations are only rarely specified by the composer. This must not imply a monotonously uniform playing of the notes on the page.
Quite on the contrary, it calls for an independent working out of these aspects of the music on the part of the performer; tempo and dynamics can be determined relatively easily from the form and character of each piece. Phrasing and articulation have been suggested by the editor, but other solutions decided on by the interpreter are also possible. The realization of the suggested ornaments, as well as other supplementations and notes, will be found in footnotes.

The editor hopes that the keyboard music of Handel will be made more widely known by means of these two educational
volumes.

Heinz Walter, Salzburg, Fall 1977