Suite in F major, BuxWV238
Baroque Suite Piano solo ~16 min
In brief

Buxtehude's Suite in F has a lively yet slightly tense character, switching between brisk dance movements and contrapuntal passages where rhythmic drive and clear voicing must be maintained. You will face specific technical challenges tied to Ornaments baroque (4.1/5) — executing quick, clean trills and mordents within the melodic line — and to Lecture clé de fa (3.1/5), which requires accurately reading and sustaining the bass-line with the left hand while preserving the overall balance. As a Baroque work, it belongs to Buxtehude's output of keyboard suites that combine dance forms with polyphonic writing. I do not provide a recommended recording here to avoid naming an interpretation I cannot confirm with certainty.

MusicCoach difficulty
55/100
Intermediate
Likely range : 43–67/100
Confidence : 35% · to confirm
BeginnerIntermediateAdvancedVirtuoso
Exam grade
About grade 6

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.

Does this rating look right to you?

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.

Add a note (optional)

Your note is not published on the site: it is read in review.

Relative difficulty
70%
Among Dietrich Buxtehude
51%
Era Baroque
44%
Genre
Estimated skills
Theory
Knowledge of forms
1
Style
Baroque style
1
Ornaments
Baroque ornaments
2
Reading
Bass clef reading
1
Tone
Touch control
1
Technique
Three-or-more-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.

See the whole progression