Suite no. 36 in A major, T.318
Baroque Suite Piano solo ~8 min
In brief

This Suite in A major has a bright, dance-like clarity with contrapuntal episodes that call for a steady pulse and a slightly detached touch to bring out the individual voices. The main technical challenges are the Ornaments of the Baroque (4.1/5) — executing rapid, precise trills and mordents within the flow without weighing down the beat — and Bass-clef reading (Lecture clé de fa, 3.1/5), since you must keep a clear bass line while shifting the left hand across registers. The piece belongs to the Baroque repertoire and reflects the composer’s typical polyphonic keyboard dance-suite output. I do not provide a specific reference performance here out of caution.

MusicCoach difficulty
46/100
Intermediate
Likely range : 34–58/100
Confidence : 35% · to confirm
BeginnerIntermediateAdvancedVirtuoso
Exam grade
About grade 5

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.

Where this work sits
050100

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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Relative difficulty
46%
Among Johann Pachelbel
27%
Era Baroque
19%
Genre
Estimated skills
Theory
Knowledge of forms
1
Ornaments
Baroque ornaments
1
Style
Baroque style
1
Reading
Bass clef reading
1
Interpretation
Dynamics
1
Interpretation
Phrasing
1
Technique
Two-voice polyphony
1
What to play next?

Each suggestion combines difficulty gap, risk, confidence and skill overlap. The first two cards in each column are the most useful pedagogically.

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