Old French Song (arranged for beginners)

Learn this piece

Composer

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Album for the Young, Op. 39 No. 16)

Arrangement

Musicanyya practice material

Level

Beginner

Key

A minor

Metre

2/4

Tempo

72 BPM

Length

17 bars, about 1 minute

Hands

both

Trains

Tchaikovsky's sad Old French Song in 2/4, from a one-eighth pickup: the tune over held chords of A minor, D minor and E major. Shape each two-bar phrase and let the long notes sing.

How to practise it

• Start from the single eighth-note pickup E before bar 2, then climb A, B, C, D to the long E in bar 3. Loop bars 1-5 at 40 BPM and count the 2/4 in eighths.
• Bars 7-9 bring the phrase down to A: E, D, C, then a long B and a short A. Give the dotted B its full length and listen for the sad close on A in bar 9.
• The left hand's lowest note is A in every bar except bars 8 and 16, where it steps down to G-sharp. Loop bars 7-9 so that step is ready on time.
• Bars 10-17 play the tune a second time, almost note for note, ending on a long A. Once bars 2-9 are secure, the whole piece is in your hands.

Where this score came from

Arrangement for this app (CC0)

Melody from Schirmer, 1904 (https://www.mutopiaproject.org/cgibin/piece-info.cgi?id=2080), public domain; left-hand chords our own (CC0)

Changes from the source: Left-hand block chords are our own (CC0). Transposed from G minor to A minor. Only the first part (bars 0 to 16, its tune played twice); the middle part (bars 17 to 24) and the return (bars 25 to 32) are left out. The tune only, over one held chord a bar instead of Tchaikovsky's left hand. The tempo, quarter = 72, is ours: Tchaikovsky writes Moderato assai (the source's MIDI file plays 70). Bars 6 and 14: the upper neighbour F-E in sixteenths after the E is left out: one E, a quarter note. Bars 7 and 15: the double-dotted B and its sixteenth A become a dotted quarter and an eighth.

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• Greensleeves (arranged for beginners) Traditional (English, 16th century)
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