Black Beauty is a classic jazz-influenced piano composition written by Duke Ellington as a tribute. It features a sophisticated harmonic language that bridges the gap between salon music and early jazz.
The main challenge is achieving the necessary jazz-inflected phrasing and smooth voice leading within the harmonic structure.
Comparable difficulty and character — good candidates for what to learn next.
Black Beauty is rated Henle level 4 of 9 — intermediate repertoire, roughly ABRSM grades 5–6. In the RCM system it corresponds to about level 6.
You should be comfortable at Henle level 4 — meaning you can already play level 3–4 pieces cleanly. Learning it one level early is possible as a stretch piece, but more than that usually leads to months of frustration.
A typical performance of Black Beauty lasts about 3 minutes.
Black Beauty is available as free public-domain sheet music on IMSLP — the score is linked directly from this page.
Pieces at a comparable difficulty and character include Andante favori by Ludwig van Beethoven, 12 Variations on 'Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen' by Ludwig van Beethoven, Barcarole by Alfred Grünfeld — see the full similar-pieces list on this page.