The Music Hall

What to listen for

A slow air in D dorian, the mode you get by playing a piano's white keys from D up to D. Most of it could pass for D minor, except for one note: the B natural that first appears in bar 4. That B is what makes it dorian, and it's the moment the tune turns a little brighter than you expect. The first half climbs to its highest note, the f in bar 5, then settles on A, an open ending that leaves the door ajar. The second half closes it, stepping down B, G, E to the D where it began.

What to listen for

Bars 1 to 4 are the loop. Bars 5 to 8 play it again with a few notes moved, so it's almost the same. Bars 9 to 12 leave the loop entirely and wander up to the highest note in the piece, the c' in bar 10, before drifting back down. Bars 13 to 16 are bars 1 to 4 again, note for note, except that the last bar holds its G instead of resting. Read bar 13 against bar 1. They're identical, and they still sound different, because of where each one comes from.

What to listen for

Two voices sing the same melody, the second starting four bars after the first. Read the two staves side by side: from bar 5 on, the two instances are always singing different parts of the same tune at the same moment. That only works because every four-bar part was written over the same four chords (C, A minor, F, G), so any part can sit on top of any other. The third part is the busiest. It's the chords themselves, broken into eighth notes, so whichever instance is singing it is quietly holding up the other one. In bar 17 they land together, the first on a high C and the second on the E below it.

What to listen for

Slow, in F major, in three. The melody keeps coming back to the same opening figure (A, G, F), which you'll find five times counting the repeat. Lullabies are built out of returning. The middle section reaches its highest note, D, in bar 9. The last phrase settles home through a C7 chord, whose B flat leans gently down toward the final F. The process this one is for can run as long as it needs to.

What to listen for

A reel is a fast dance tune, and by tradition each half is played twice, which is what the |: and :| marks mean. This one is for the moment a test turns green. The first half is the relief: it runs up and down the D major chord. The second half is where you run the whole suite again just to make sure. It sits higher, keeps circling the same few notes, and then lands exactly where the first half did, on D, as if nothing had happened.

What to listen for

Eight bars, five notes, five rests. In ABC a rest is written z. Exactly half of this piece is silence: sixteen beats of notes and sixteen beats of rest. Read the rests as carefully as the notes. The last A carries a fermata (!fermata!), which means hold it for as long as you like.