Free Couperin sheet music
2 Couperin scores on Artform's shelf, ordered easiest to read first. Every score here is public domain, free to read, print and keep.
Open the sheet music libraryFrançois Couperin (1668-1733)
French harpsichordist known in his own time as Couperin le Grand, court musician to Louis XIV at Versailles, and the composer who taught France how to play the keyboard: his treatise on fingering is where much of modern technique starts, and Bach studied it. His pieces come in ordres rather than suites, with titles like The Mysterious Barricades and The Little Windmills, describing moods and people rather than dances. Nobody has ever satisfactorily explained what the barricades are.
Start with these
The easiest Couperin on the shelf, in order. Nothing here is graded and nobody is ranked: the shelf simply puts the pieces that ask less of your hands before the ones that ask more.
How the reader works
Each score opens as engraved notation you can read from the stand, and it plays: hear the piece first, then slow it down and loop the bar that is not working. There is nothing to install and no account to make. When you want paper, print it.
Every file is MusicXML, so MuseScore, Sibelius, Finale and Dorico open them too.
Where to go next
If you are learning Couperin rather than only reading, the scale pages cover fingering in every key, the chord pages spell out every chord, and the symbol dictionary explains any mark on the page you do not recognise.