Le Retour, Op. 100 No. 23, by Burgmüller
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How to learn Le Retour, Op. 100 No. 23
- Hear it through at Slow (95 bpm). Open it in the reader, choose Slow, and follow the page with your eyes without playing. As it plays, count 2 big beats to the bar.
- Learn the right hand of bars 1 to 8 on its own, in E♭ major. Say the note names out loud the first time through, then play it three times without stopping.
- Find the chords under it: B♭, B♭7, B♭6 and B♭sus2. Play each one as a block in your left hand and say its name, so you know what the harmony is before the left hand has to move.
- Learn the left hand of the same bars on its own. Keep it quiet and even: it is the floor the tune stands on.
- Put hands together at Slow, 95 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (142 bpm) once Slow feels easy three times in a row. Then learn the next 8 bars the same way: right hand, left hand, together.
- Play the whole piece (under a minute) from the start, at whatever speed keeps it going. A steady run with a few slips beats a fast one that stops.
About this piece
Number 23 of Op. 100, The Return, is a rush of excitement, marked molto agitato quasi presto: a homecoming in E flat major. Pulsing repeated chords drive it along, a stormier middle section turns to the minor, and the bright opening returns before the final quiet chords.
How to play it
Keep the repeated chords light and close to the keys, playing from the wrist rather than the arm, so the speed never makes them heavy. Lean a little on the long melody notes in the right hand so they carry over the pulse.
Reading it, and printing it
The score opens in Artform's reader, which shows the music as engraved notation and plays it back so you can hear the line before you try it. You can slow the tempo down, loop a passage that is not working yet, and print the page when you would rather have paper on the stand.
The file itself is MusicXML, which MuseScore, Sibelius, Finale and Dorico all open, so the notes are yours to keep whatever you read them in.
More free Burgmüller sheet music
Where else this one is listed
The same piece, in the lists people search for.
Who Burgmüller was
German-born pianist and composer who spent most of his career in Paris writing music for the ballet stage, largely forgotten today except for one extraordinary exception: his 25 Études faciles, Op. 100, a set of short, vividly characterized studies, "Ballade," "Innocence," "The Storm," written to teach piano technique without ever feeling like homework. Generations of students have met their first real musical challenges through these pieces, most of them probably without knowing anything else about the man who wrote them.
Learn the music behind it
Reading a piece and understanding it are different skills. If you want the harmony under this one, the chord trainer teaches chords the way songs use them, and the scale pages cover the fingering for every key, including E♭ major.