Aurore, Op. 39 No. 1, by Fauré
Every score here is public domain, free to read, print and keep. Open it in the browser and it plays, at whatever tempo you can read it.
Get the practice plan for Aurore, Op. 39 No. 1
Here it is. Check your inbox for day 1.
- Hear it through at Slow (38 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, in F major. Say the note names out loud the first time through, then play it three times without stopping.
- Find the chords under it: Gm7, F6, C7 and F. 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, 38 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (57 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 2 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
The first of Fauré's four songs of Op. 39, to a poem by Armand Silvestre in which the stars fly from the gardens of night like golden bees. Arranged for piano from the song for voice and piano, the Andante unfolds its long vocal line over a gently pulsing accompaniment.
How to play it
Let the melody in the right hand carry over the bar lines in long arcs, and keep the repeated chords beneath it hushed.
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 #1829, in the public domain. Converted to MusicXML by Artform and checked note for note against the original.
More free Fauré sheet music
Who Fauré was
French composer who spent decades as a church organist and choirmaster to pay the bills while composing some of the most quietly refined music of his era, only achieving real recognition late in life when he became director of the Paris Conservatoire, from where he taught and championed a generation of younger composers, Ravel among them. His Requiem set out deliberately to avoid the fire-and-brimstone drama of the form, aiming instead, in his own words, for something more like "a lullaby of death." He kept composing even through severe hearing loss and near-total deafness in his final years, guided entirely by his inner ear.
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 F major.