It was a Friday with clear, warm weather. I could feel the warm, gentle, autumn breeze brush up against my arms as I rushed inside, as I realized that I have a nice, long weekend ahead of me with Labor Day. I got started on homework, picked some tunes, and I found it. I scurried to the printer, sent the command to print, and I was ready. Forget homework, piano is where it’s at. My fingers fly all around the keyboard as I attempt to play Mozart’s most famous masterpiece, Rondo Alla Turca, trying to hit the sharps, the octaves, and the trills. Of course I whiff on 99.9% of all notes on the first time around. I got mad, with a fiery hatred at myself for making the egregious decision of giving up piano. I am an impatient guy, or at least was, before this experience. Here’s the thing. At the time, I was very rusty at piano. So I was wondering, how is a guy, like me, who hasn’t played piano for three years going to master the piece? Well, here is how.

    I was just watching YouTube videos one day until I decided to listen to some music. Some real relaxing tunes. Everyone knows that classical music has great music for relaxing. So, I looked up relaxing classical music. I opened up the video. Half an hour in, I got through 45% of my homework that day, and then I heard the song. The one where everyone knows how the first few measures sound like, but doesn’t know the name and the rest of the song. Good thing is, the guy who made the video put the song name in the description and a time-stamp. Thank you very much, Rousseau. Anyways, I go into MusiScores.com, where a lot of music is available for free. I looked up the song, Rondo Alla Turca, and I found it. I screenshotted the music on my computer (don’t expose me, I just didn’t want to be bothered with a subscription), sent it to print on my mom’s printer, and started practicing. 

First, I go and apply my own rule for practicing and learning a piece of music. My rule for practicing a new piece is to always start off with my right hand after you’ve dissected the piece. The right hand is where most of the time is where the melody is, and breaking down a piece helps make learning it easier. Left hand is mainly supporting the right hand’s melody. The first few measures are quite simple to learn. A couple of sharps here and there, not big of a deal. The time signature is cut time, which means two quarter notes for each measure. This song has an upbeat for every separate section, like the beginning, middle, and the end. Again, not that bad rhythmically. Techniques I needed are just a flexible hand and the knowledge of how scales work. Again, not that bad. Lots of grace notes, which look like exponents that lay on the left side of a note. It makes you play that tiny note quickly and then the main one. There is a shift in the scale that changes in the middle of the song a couple of times, from A minor to major.  Again, not bad once you got the hang of it. So that’s the first few sections, right? Pretty easy so far, right? I was very wrong. 

Next comes the nastiest chorus I have ever seen, second only to the chorus of La Campanella by Liszt or Fantasie Impromptu by Chopin. It is all played in octaves, so I have to keep my hands (even the left) spread out far enough to play an octave. My left hand is playing broken octave chords, which are also annoying. I got that same burning hatred at myself as before, and I just got mad and gave up. 

So after all that, I have this dilemma where my emotions, fingers, and patience aren’t flexible enough yet (keyword yet) to deal with the “chorus of rage.” I was asking myself, can’t I just give up and play bootleg Ode to Joy (the real Ode to Joy is played in G major with the melody being played in chords with an introduction in the bass clef. Many different variants were used for younger kids to feel cool) at this point? No. After a bit of time in which I enjoyed some nice, relaxing, soft breaks, I endured painful times of stretching out my fingers until they were good enough. Sounds like masochism, but it isn’t. All pianists have to do this eventually. Took me three weeks, and guess what? It was worth it because the rest of the song had a bit of repeats of the chorus and the first sections, which means this stretching will pay itself off extremely quickly.  Plus, many other classical pieces use octaves a lot.  So that’s all fine and dandy, but I got stuck on the flute solo part. It was hard to get that left hand playing at the right time and shift positions quick enough, because the whole song is in allegretto (fast), and the right hand is playing in 16th notes.   

After a week and quite a bit of practice and patience, however, I managed to get the right flow. My right hand’s fingers float gracefully up in the treble like I was in heaven, hitting all the right keys, shifting with extreme precision, as it was on beat with the consistent tick of the metronome. My left hand hit the right broken and unbroken chords. It felt satisfying, knowing that because I practiced with patience, I managed to master that part. Then we have the scales. Not very bad, just A major scales up and down. The left hand is just playing some A major chords. After that, we’re back to some more flutes. This time, there is a twist about 5 measures into that part. But no worries, just analyze the pattern and slowly make progress. 

Now, we are back to the beginning. The next few sections are the same as the start. Not a big deal. Cakewalk. But this chorus will be absolute torture because Mozart doesn’t like me. No, I’m kidding. The real reason was because the octaves are played in a broken way. For example, you play a C# octave for this chorus. But you must play the lower C# first then the higher C#, which means pinky jumps. Pinky jumps are one of the hardest techniques in piano playing. It is very common in Liszt, and there are so many more classical pieces that are crucial to learn with the techniques in them. It means that you can consistently play the right note like 10 keys apart from the pinky jumping there. The amount of times I have heard a messed up note that sounded like the music to a satanic ritual is actually absurd. I could feel myself slowly dying inside as I wondered how in the world I would actually do this. I see the sheet music in front of me. It looks like it’s taunting me. I know what the part is supposed to sound like, but my fingers couldn’t feel it. It was like I was stuck inside a trap, endlessly trying different ways to get out. Of course, I just slowly play notes with slow pinky movements. Then I speed up after a few tries. Eventually, I got the right hand. The left hand is the same as the previous choruses. So overall, pain. I didn’t like it, but you know what they say, “No pain, no gain.”

The final part and ending of Mozart’s Rondo Alla Turca is fairly simple. The smooth transition to the A major octave chord from the stinky chorus was ridiculously simple.  The octave chord starts from the C# that is played in a tremolo fashion, so a C#, E, A, and then another C#. The left hand plays similarly with the same scale that the right hand is playing. A major right hand, the left hand supports with A major as well. Then, there are some melody shenanigans with A major, your left hand literally jumps forward a massive distance, and then it goes back down. No pauses, but it isn’t that bad. The key here is to have your piano chair a bit higher than usual so that the left hand can jump more easily (I don’t think Mozart had a height-changing chair, otherwise he would’ve been unstoppable). So really, the ending was a bit anticlimactic. It was a lot easier to learn than the other parts. 

Finally, after all that, I didn’t have much trouble, and I feel like the only reason that I mastered this piece was because I mastered patience. Now, I am attempting the third movement of Moonlight Sonata, in which this patience is really helping. I learned this patience from working throughout the experience as I tackled the first ever serious classical piece that I will learn. This patience that I learned will help me master many other pieces of music, like Liszt, Chopin, Beethoven, and maybe even some more Mozart. The techniques are really needed for other famous music as well, such as the octaves, which are very prominent in Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, with its very iconic introduction and intense final movement (the second movement is interesting, as it is played in a major scale as the first and third were played in minor, I personally think that it is a sub par mid-movement, as it doesn’t fit the theme really well). Just remember, if you are struggling through something, slow down. Be patient. It’ll almost always work out in your favor, just like how it worked out for me.