Offertoire in D minor (Premier livre d'orgue)
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Get the practice plan for Offertoire in D minor (Premier livre d'orgue)
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- Hear it through at Slow (92 bpm). Open it in the reader, choose Slow, and follow the page with your eyes without playing. As it plays, count 4 to the bar.
- Learn the right hand of bars 1 to 8 on its own. Say the note names out loud the first time through, then play it three times without stopping.
- Find the chords under it: Dm, A7, Dsus4 and Fmaj7. 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, 92 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (138 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 (about 3 minutes) 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
An offertoire accompanied the offertory at Mass, and French organists made it one of their grandest forms. This one by Jean-François Dandrieu comes from Guilmant's 1905 edition in the Archives des Maîtres de l'Orgue; it is written without a key signature in the old way, though the music is in D minor, and it changes metre partway through for a new section. Arranged for piano from the organ original.
How to play it
Give the opening repeated notes a ceremonial, detached touch. When the metre changes, set the new tempo decisively and keep it through to the end.
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.
Edition: Mutopia Project #696, licensed CC BY-SA. Converted to MusicXML by Artform and checked note for note against the original.
More free Dandrieu sheet music
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.