TGIF! I wanted to hurry up and get to the end of this book, so here are three etudes in one day. Number 22 in B minor was definitely the most fun of these last three, though I found it challenging to keep the tempo steady and not slow down during the syncopated quarter notes. It was also a really good exercise in practicing alternate F-sharp and A-sharp fingerings back-to-back with the standard fingerings.
Number 23 was another one of the long repetitive etudes that seem so common in this book. As it says at the top of the page, the challenge is in making the turns sound different in “binary and tertiary rhythm,” which we see here as 4/4 and 12/8. Since there are no dynamics or other expressive instructions, I tried to make the binary sections sound more vibrant and aggressive and tried to play more softly and gently for the 12/8 variations.
Last one! Playing septuplets evenly is always a big challenge, and for this exercise I wanted to make sure I was playing all the real fingerings accurately and not using any trill fingerings to cheat. The thing that made this especially tough was the instruction senza accentuare (without accent), since I found it very tempting to emphasize the first note of each beat to make the melodic line more obvious. It seems appropriate that this last etude ends with octaves that are really difficult to play beautifully in tune- so much of this material has looked deceptively simple but has turned out to be really challenging!
Final reflections on Moyse’s 24 Petites Études Mélodiques:
Date started: April 24, 2020
Date completed: June 12, 2020
Favorite etude: No. 18 Allegro molto staccato (C sharp minor)
Most challenging etude: No. 20 Andantino (F sharp minor)
I’m looking forward to starting a new book! See you soon!
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