By decade composed
Piano Music of the 1780s
75 public-domain works composed between 1780 and 1789. A snapshot of keyboard composition in a single decade — what was being written, where it sat in each composer's output, and how the conventions of the keyboard were evolving in real time.
Context: the 1780s in keyboard music
The decade of the 1780s falls in Mozart's mature Vienna years, the great piano concertos, and the consolidation of Classical sonata-allegro form. The works listed here are drawn from across the geographic centres of European keyboard composition in that period — primarily the German lands, France, Italy, the Habsburg territories, and (later in the century) Russia, Poland, Bohemia, and Scandinavia.
Reading a single decade's keyboard output as a unit is one of the most useful exercises a serious pianist or musicologist can do. It shows the dominant forms in real proportion (how many sonatas, how many preludes, how many character pieces), reveals which composers were prolific and which were quietly working in shadow, and exposes the harmonic and textural common-practice of the moment in a way that the broader era labels cannot.
Every score below links to its IMSLP catalog page, where you can download the PDF, compare editions, and read the editorial notes prepared by the Petrucci Music Library volunteer community.
Works composed in the 1780s
75 scores · page 1 of 3