As new musical styles have emerged in the twentieth century with characteristic sounds, chords, forms, meters, and intervals, teachers need to broaden and re-define the way they introduce musical concepts to beginning piano students. The purpose of this study is to offer different instructional possibilities aside from conventional methods of teaching beginning pianists. This is accomplished through a comparison of the two different approaches of the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók and the American composer Ross Lee Finney. Bartók’s Mikrokosmos, a graded set of 153 pieces, and Finney's 32 Piano Games are examined through this paper.

Paul Creston (1906-1985) was one of the most significant American composers from the middle of the twentieth century. Though Creston maintained elements of the nineteenth-century Romantic tradition and was categorized as a “Neo-Romantic” or “20th-century traditionalist,” many of Creston’s compositions contain elements of Baroque music. His Piano Sonata, Opus 9 provides significant examples of Baroque elements, while already foreshadowing his mature style. The purpose of this study is to explore Baroque elements in the compositional language of Paul Creston’s Piano Sonata, Opus 9. All four movements of the Piano Sonata will be examined in regards to its stylistic features associated with Baroque practices. These features mainly consist of rhythm, texture, imitative writing, and repeated phrase structure. Each category of the study will include comparisons of Domenico Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas with Creston’s sonata. Through an examination of the Piano Sonata and its Baroque elements, this study hopes to inspire renewed interest in the work among musicians and to help the performer give a more stylistically coherent, and accurate, performance.

The etudes of Chopin are masterworks of the piano literature and are designed to go beyond mere technical exercises; moreover, each etude represents not only a technical study but also has a distinct musical character. Alarmingly, the current trend seems to be to assign the Chopin etudes at an increasingly young age to students who are not yet equipped either technically or musically to handle them. As Chopin’s pupil, Carl Mikuli, commented in the preface to his Chopin edition, the etudes were meant for “more advanced students.” If Chopin had intended his etudes for students at an intermediate level, he would have assigned them to most of his students; however, only a limited number of students had his permission to work on their master’s etudes. As a teacher, I have always felt the need to devise a systematic teaching plan to guide students to handle the challenges of these pieces both physically and musically. This study examines the repertoire which might help prepare a student to learn the etudes without overstraining his/her muscular and mental ability. Rooted in Chopin’s teaching and his recommendation of the pieces to learn before tackling the etudes themselves, this pedagogical study guide intends to help …