Amy Beach - Children’s Carnival Op. 25 (UNIVERSAL CHILDREN’S DAY FINALE)

Children᾽s Carnival, op. 25, has six movements, which are named after characters or episodes that may be found in pantomime or commedia del᾽arte. The first movement, “Promenade,” is the march-style introductory piece to the suite. “Promenade” opens with a trumpet-like, four-measure fanfare in octaves with both hands playing together. The fanfare features repeated notes and arpeggios, and Beach was very specific regarding fingering in this section. Beach᾽s fastidious and thorough fingering indications demonstrate her desire to help students develop good technique, and provide her interpretation, as a pianist-composer, of the best execution of the piece. “Promenade” has a right-hand melody with a broken-chord accompaniment. The primary rhythmic skill addressed in “Promenade” is the execution of the dotted-eighth-sixteenth rhythm in the melody. The B section contrasts this skipping dotted-eighth-sixteenth rhythm with a flowing scalar even eighth-note rhythm to reinforce the stylistic difference between the two