Romantic piano pieces
Love songs without words, free to read, hear and print.
Open the sheet music libraryMusic written for one person, or at least written as though it were. Liszt set a poem about love as far as the grave and then made the piano sing it without the words; Elgar wrote Salut d'Amour as an engagement present; Schumann wrote Träumerei in a year he spent mostly writing to Clara. The nocturnes are night music, which is the same thing by another name.
Easiest first. Several of these are within reach much sooner than their reputations suggest, Träumerei and Salut d'Amour especially, and the reader will play any of them back at whatever speed you can follow.
About the pieces
Nocturne n3 Rêve d'Amour
The third of the three Liebestraume, or dreams of love, each one a transcription of a song Liszt had already written.
Romance Anonimo (Romanza)
A romance is simply a song for an instrument: a lyrical melody and an accompaniment that stays out of its way.
Gymnopédie No. 1
Satie was playing piano in Montmartre cafés when he wrote three pieces named after a dance of ancient Sparta. Against the perfumed excess of his era he set almost nothing: a swaying bass, a floating tune, and no hurry whatsoever.
Prelude in E minor
Chopin wrote twenty-four preludes, one in every key, and this is the saddest of them. The melody barely moves: it is the left-hand chords underneath that sink, one semitone at a time, like something slowly giving way.
Für Elise
Nobody knows who Elise was: the manuscript vanished and the name may even be a misreading of Therese, a woman Beethoven proposed to and lost. What survives is the most recognised opening in piano music: three notes rocking on a semitone, meaning something no one can quite name.
Kinderszenen, Op. 15 No. 7: Träumerei
The seventh of Schumann's Scenes from Childhood of 1838, and by far the most famous. The title means dreaming, and one rising phrase is heard again and again, passed between the voices over gentle, shifting harmonies.
Salut d'amour Edward Love's Greeting
Elgar wrote it as an engagement present for Caroline Alice Roberts, who had given up a great deal to marry a music teacher with no money. He sold the rights for two pounds and it became a hit that earned him nothing.
Arabesque No. 1
An arabesque is an ornament: a line that curls for the pleasure of curling. The young Debussy took the word from painting and made the piano do it, triplets pouring against pairs until the bar line almost dissolves.
Nocturne in E major, Op. 62 No. 2
The final nocturne Chopin published in his lifetime has a warm, calm opening and a more restless, contrapuntal middle section where several voices move together.
RomancesSansParoles 3
A romance is simply a song for an instrument: a lyrical melody and an accompaniment that stays out of its way. Faure wrote with a harmonic subtlety that slips past on first hearing, and went deaf in his later years while continuing to compose.
Clair de Lune
Moonlight, from a poem by Verlaine about masked dancers who are almost, but not quite, sad. Debussy wrote it at twenty-eight and it has become the most famous quiet piece in the world: music that seems to arrive from somewhere rather than begin.
Nocturne in E♭
The nocturne, a song for the night, was invented by John Field, but Chopin made it his own at twenty with this one. It is an aria without a singer: the right hand is a voice, complete with breaths and embellishments that grow more elaborate each time the tune returns.
Liebestraum No. 3 in A-flat major
A transcription of Liszt's own song on Freiligrath's poem about loving while you still can. The two cadenzas are the point where the singer would have stopped and the pianist takes over.
Serenade (Ständchen)
A lover sings under a window at night; Schubert died months later and the publisher named the collection Swan Song. Liszt loved it enough to carry it to the piano himself.