Canon in C minor
Cello and Piano beta difficulty
In brief

The Canon in C minor has a taut, contrapuntal character, with answering lines between cello and piano that call for precise balance and clarity more than overtly Romantic flair. You will need to focus on Intonation (violoncelle) (4.5/5) — precise left-hand gestures, exact finger placement and micro-adjustments in shifting — and on Legato d'archet (violoncelle) (3.0/5), which requires controlled bow arm motion to connect tones smoothly without unintended accents, managing bow speed and pressure. The work’s period is listed as unknown and, based on the provided information, it stands as a cello-and-piano piece of moderate technical level (35/100). I do not provide a reference recording here out of caution since no widely recognized attribution was confirmed.

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Sheet music

Public-domain sheet music on IMSLP ↗

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Formation

Cello and piano · 2 performers

Required forces
Cello 1 performers
Piano 1 performers
Playable parts
Cello Piano
MusicCoach difficulty
35/100
Elementary
Likely range : 23–47/100
Confidence : 22% · to confirm
BeginnerIntermediateAdvancedVirtuoso
Exam grade
About grade 3 to 4

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
Among Hiram Samuel Lopez
21%
Era
Genre
Estimated skills
Technique
Intonation (cello)
1
Reading
Bass clef reading
1
Technique
Bow legato (cello)
1
Interpretation
Phrasing
1
Technique
General technique
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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