A piano piece or piece for piano (german: Klavierstück, ; french: morceau rpièce pour (le) piano, ) is a piece of music for

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a musica ...

. It is a generic name for any composition for the instrument, but when capitalised (Piano Piece, Piece for Piano) the name is used to indicate a (usually) single-movement composition for solo piano that has not been given a more specific name (such as

Sonatina A sonatina is a small sonata. As a musical term, sonatina has no single strict definition; it is rather a title applied by the composer to a piece that is in basic sonata form, but is shorter and lighter in character, or technically more elementar ...

, '' Allegro de concert'' or '' Le Bananier''), for example: *

Johannes Brahms Johannes Brahms (; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid- Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped wit ...

's Sechs Klavierstücke (Six Piano Pieces), Op. 118 *

Arnold Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...

's Drei Klavierstücke (Three Piano Pieces) *

Karlheinz Stockhausen Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groun ...

's Klavierstücke As the German word ' may indicate other

keyboard instrument A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played using a keyboard, a row of levers which are pressed by the fingers. The most common of these are the piano, organ, and various electronic keyboards, including synthesizers and digital pia ...

s besides the piano, not all Klavierstücke are composed for the piano; for example, the pieces included in the

Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach ''Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach'' (Bach's original spelling: ''Clavier-Büchlein vor Wilhelm Friedemann Bach'') is a collection of keyboard music compiled by the German Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach for his eldest son W ...

are rather to be regarded as keyboard pieces than piano pieces. In 1768

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (8 March 1714 – 14 December 1788), also formerly spelled Karl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, and commonly abbreviated C. P. E. Bach, was a German Classical period musician and composer, the fifth child and sec ...

published his '' Kurze und leichte Klavierstücke'', Wq 113. In this case each of the 11 pieces included in the volume has a separate title (Allegro, Arioso, Fantasia, etc.). For

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition r ...

's compositions, Klavierstück may refer to posthumously published pieces without a definite title (e.g. Klavierstück in F, K. 33b), or, as in the

Neue Mozart-Ausgabe The ''Neue Mozart-Ausgabe'' (''NMA''; English: ''New Mozart Edition'') is the second complete works edition of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A longer and more formal title for the edition is ''Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791): Neue A ...

, to various single-movement compositions for solo piano or other keyboard instrument.

Wolfgang Rehm Wolfgang Rehm (3 September 1929 – 6 April 2017) was a German musicologist active mostly in music publishing, especially the '' Neue Mozart-Ausgabe''. He was on the board of its editorial team for decades, and personally edited operas and piano m ...

Klavierstücke, Band 1 und 2
Work Group 27: Piano Pieces o
Series IX: Piano Music
of the

at the

Bärenreiter Bärenreiter (Bärenreiter-Verlag) is a German classical music publishing house based in Kassel. The firm was founded by Karl Vötterle (1903–1975) in Augsburg in 1923, and moved to Kassel in 1927, where it still has its headquarters; it als ...

website

Schubert Franz Peter Schubert (; 31 January 179719 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast ''oeuvre'', including more than 600 secular vocal wor ...

's '' Fünf Klavierstücke'' were published in 1843, 15 years after the composer's death: the first two pieces of this set belong to the same apparently unfinished

piano sonata A piano sonata is a sonata written for a solo piano. Piano sonatas are usually written in three or four movements, although some piano sonatas have been written with a single movement ( Scarlatti, Liszt, Scriabin, Medtner, Berg), others wit ...

(), the last three () may have been conceived as independent piano pieces, although there is considerable speculation as to how they may be grouped in multi-movement sonatas in combination with various piano pieces by Schubert.{{cite journal , jstor=931138 , last=Lindmayr-Brandl , first=Andrea , title=Die "wiederentdeckte" unvollendete "Sonate in E" D 459 und die "Fünf Klavierstücke" von Franz Schubert , journal=

Archiv für Musikwissenschaft The ''Archiv für Musikwissenschaft'' is a quarterly German-English-speaking trade magazine devoted to music history and historical musicology, which publishes articles by well-known academics and young scholars. It was founded in 1918 as the s ...

, volume=57 Jahrg. , issue=H.2. , pages=130–150 , year=2000, publisher=Franz Steiner Verlag Another set of three piano pieces by Schubert is also known as his last three Impromptus. Since the middle of the twentieth century auxiliary instruments, tape, or live-electronics may be employed without changing the basic idea of a solo piano piece, for example Stockhausen's Klavierstück XVI. There are also multi-movement works titled in the singular, as for example Michael Gielen's ''Klavierstück in sieben Sätzen "recycling der glocken"'' (Piano Piece in Seven Movements "Recycling of Bells") for prepared piano, bells, and tape.

References