Estimated from our difficulty score, not taken from an exam syllabus. Checked against 333 works on the ABRSM syllabus: the exact grade is right 7 times out of 10, and within one grade 99 times out of 100.
Difficulty estimate by MusicCoach on a scale of 1 to 100.
Most works cluster between 45 and 65: a small score gap often marks a real step. The highlighted bar shows this work among those for the same instrument.
The MusicCoach difficulty measures a work's overall demands (technique, reading, stamina) on a shared 0-100 scale, consolidated from editorial and pedagogical reference points (Henle, exam syllabuses, curation) and our own analyses. It measures neither musical value nor the practice time YOU will need: two musicians of the same level can experience the same work very differently depending on their strengths (hands used to octaves, quick sight-reading…). The confidence reflects how many reference points sit behind the score and how well they agree — a lightly documented score is flagged “to validate”. For a truly personal bearing, the diagnostic and your space compare each work to YOUR estimated level, which the score alone cannot do.
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This rating is computed automatically from heterogeneous sources. It gets things wrong, sometimes badly. If you know this work, your answer is worth more than our computation: it tells us which ratings to review.
Each suggestion combines difficulty gap, risk, confidence and skill overlap. The first two cards in each column are the most useful pedagogically.
The safest next step.
A genuine step up, without a jolt.
A useful leap with guided practice.
Charles Ives's Allegretto: Invention has a lively, contrapuntal character, with playful motifs and sharper, rougher moments where the voices cross abruptly instead of a single flowing melody. You will specifically face «Polyphony in two voices (4.6/5)» and «Independence of the hands (4.6/5)», which here mean sustaining two distinct musical lines and balancing them simultaneously — right and left hands must articulate contrasting phrases without one overpowering the other — and, given the «Style baroque (4.6/5)» rating, adopting a clear, detached touch and precise phrasing to bring out the imitative writing. Located in Ives's modern period, the piece shows his tendency to blend traditional forms with more dissonant, experimental language, often serving as a pedagogical, polyphonic study rather than a large-scale concert work.