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.

Between 1795 and 1802, Beethoven composed a large number of German dances, contredances and minuets. He made simple piano reductions of a considerable proportion of these occasional compositions.

The selection of the present pieces was made on the basis of the compositions that seemed most suitable for the piano. The piano arrangements are based on the scores and the original piano reductions, and the marks of interpretation have been retained. The working-out of more finely-differentiated interpretations is left to the performer studying the pieces.

These grateful little pieces are equally suitable as studies and as recital pieces.

Heinz Walter, Salzburg, Fall 1974