A Prole do bebê, A.140, "A família do bebê"
Modern Piano solo ~20 min
In brief

This piece evokes a domestic, playful yet restrained portrait of a baby’s family, with repeating little motifs that suggest familiar household gestures and delicate harmonic colors rather than overt drama. Technically you will need to handle the 2-against-3 polyrhythm (3.1/5) by stabilizing hand independence so the ternary figures sit evenly against the duple pulse — short, controlled movements of the accompanying hand are crucial — and cultivate the impressionistic style (3.1/5) through very fine touch and pedal control to shape pearly timbres and subtle color shifts. The work belongs to the composer’s modern period and is part of the piano miniatures cycle that sketches brief, descriptive character pieces within his catalogue.

MusicCoach difficulty
70/100
Advanced
Likely range : 58–82/100
Confidence : 25% · to confirm
BeginnerIntermediateAdvancedVirtuoso
Exam grade
About grade 7 to 8

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
89%
Among Heitor Villa-Lobos
82%
Era Modern
Genre
Estimated skills
Rhythm
Polyrhythm 2 against 3
1
Style
Modern and contemporary style
1
Technique
Double notes
1
Technique
Octaves
1
Ornaments
Romantic ornaments
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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