How to practise it
Czerny wrote his 160 eight-measure exercises, Op. 821, as short daily work. No. 1 is in C major, Allegro: the right hand plays sixteenth notes from start to finish, the left hand quarter notes. Its eight bars make exactly two blocks.
- Start with the right hand alone at 60% and listen for evenness: every sixteenth the same length and the same loudness.
- Watch the notes that fall on the thumb: an accent there is the most common unevenness.
- The left hand only marks the beat; keep it softer than the right.
- Once both blocks are clean, play all eight bars as one. That join is the exercise's real test.
Agility · Evenness
Where the score comes from
Carl Czerny, Eight-measure exercise, Op. 821 No. 1. Mutopia engraving by Manuel Castejon Limas, after Leipzig: Edition Peters, n.d.[1888], plates 6990-6993, Mutopia-2015/11/06-2060, dedicated to the public domain by the typesetter: https://www.mutopiaproject.org/ftp/CzernyC/Op_821/Czerny_Op_821_No_001/. MusicXML edition by Noctave, CC0 1.0: https://noctavepiano.com/partitions/czerny-op821-1/. Gradiano: title and provenance metadata added; editorial tempo 88 quarter notes per minute retained from Noctave (Mutopia MIDI tempo is 110); missing printed 8va restored from Mutopia, measure 6 beat 3 to measure 7 beat 2; sounding notes unchanged. This exercise has no claim of admission approval.