Gaudeamus Igitur Paraphrase, by Liszt
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 Gaudeamus Igitur Paraphrase
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- Hear it through at Slow (64 bpm). Open it in the reader, choose Slow, and follow the page with your eyes without playing. As it plays, count 3 to the bar.
- Learn the right hand of bars 1 to 8 on its own, in C major. Say the note names out loud the first time through, then play it three times without stopping.
- 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, 64 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (96 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 9 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
Built on Gaudeamus Igitur, the drinking song that has been the students' anthem of European universities since the eighteenth century. Liszt wrote it for a jubilee at Jena.
How to play it
Keep the tune audible under the decoration; the whole joke depends on the song being recognised.
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 Liszt sheet music
Who Liszt was
Hungarian composer and, by nearly every account, the greatest virtuoso pianist of the 19th century, so magnetic in performance that audiences reportedly fainted, a phenomenon a contemporary dubbed "Lisztomania." He invented the symphonic poem, transcribed entire symphonies and operas for solo piano so audiences without an orchestra nearby could still hear them, and pushed piano technique into territory no one had mapped before. In his forties he abruptly gave up the touring life, took minor holy orders, and spent his later years writing sparer, stranger, more prophetic music that wouldn't be fully understood for decades. He was also a famously generous teacher, refusing to charge the young p…
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 C major.