In Italian, it means “slow and sustained,” which is a friendly pace for beginning learners.

The tempo of the piece is Adagio sostenuto. The next day, tackle five more until you are ready to put it together.

One day you can play through five measures and work out the trouble spots. Practice tip: Focus on short segments of this piece until you have them down. The arpeggios should also be softer than the melody line. However, as you play, ensure the deep notes don’t overpower the treble clef notes in the right hand. Since Beethoven lost his hearing as he wrote this piece, it makes sense that he doubled up on these notes. The low notes in the left-hand span an octave. Your fingers must exercise control to get this sound balance at the piano. You usually hear the Moonlight Sonata as soft and lilting with a strong melody line. Then, when Beethoven throws the accidentals at you, you can conquer them one by one. This makes you aware of which black keys are included in the key. Practice tip: To make this piece easier to play, you can first practice the scale of the key signature. The natural sign cancels out the sharp of the key signature, while the sharp sign accidental (#) adds in even more black keys. You have more going on than the key of C (which has no sharps or flats), but it is doable.īut then, Beethoven throws in accidentals in the form of the natural signs (♮) and sharps. This key signature has four sharps, so you play the notes on those lines a half step up on the black keys. The Moonlight Sonata opens with a C-sharp minor key signature. This gradual increase in speed builds energy as the piece continues. Instead of writing the sonata in the fast-slow-fast form, Beethoven writes the movements as slow-medium-fast. Then in the third movement, the frantic pace and crashing chords give a thrilling ending. The second movement is less brooding and becomes almost cheerful and friendly. When it was written, musicians used broken chords and arpeggios to improvise a tune but rarely wrote them into a piece. The haunting melody moves the listener gently through the piece with rolling arpeggios. The first movement is dark, moody, and the most famous. He adds the epithet Sonata Quasi Una Fantasia, which lets the listener know this piece is more free-form than the usual sonata. Each section creates a mood or theme and focuses on one central instrument (in this case, the piano).īeethoven follows the format of a sonata to a point, but as usual, he breaks more rules than he follows. Like a proper sonata, the Moonlight sonata is divided into three different movements.

Easy moonlight sonata sheet music free