Sonata in C minor, K. 457: I. Molto allegro, by Mozart
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.
✦ Keylight · the first 100
Learn Sonata in C minor, K. 457: I. Molto allegro with the keys lit
Keylight lights every key as the music plays, loops any bar and takes one hand at a time, so it comes together a few bars at a time. The first 100 pianists get it free, for life.
places left · until 4 January
Claim a free placeNo card, nothing to pay, ever. The practice rooms are free forever.
How to learn Sonata in C minor, K. 457: I. Molto allegro
- Hear it through at Slow (84 bpm). Open it in the reader, choose Slow, and follow the page with your eyes without playing. As it plays, count 2 to the bar.
- Learn the right hand of bars 1 to 8 on its own, in C minor. Say the note names out loud the first time through, then play it three times without stopping.
- Find the chords under it: Cm, Ddim7, G and E♭. 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, 84 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (126 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 4 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 movement of one of Mozart's only two piano sonatas in a minor key, written in Vienna in 1784 and published the next year with the Fantasia K. 475, both dedicated to his pupil Therese von Trattner. It opens with a fierce rising arpeggio answered by a soft sigh, and its dark drama is often heard as a step towards Beethoven.
How to play it
Make the contrast between the loud rising call and the quiet answer immediate, with no gradual crescendo between them. The fast passagework should stay clean and light even in forte, so keep the hand close to the keys.
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 #356, in the public domain. Converted to MusicXML by Artform and checked note for note against the original.
More free Mozart sheet music
Who Mozart was
Austrian composer, a child prodigy paraded across European courts by his father before he was six, who grew into one of the most fluent composers who ever lived: symphonies, operas, and concertos that read as though they cost him no effort at all, though the manuscripts tell a more careful story. He wrote The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and the Requiem, left unfinished at his death at thirty-five and completed from his sketches by a student. The old story of his poverty and pauper's grave is mostly myth; what's true is a composer who could hold an entire opera in his head before setting down a note, and whose clarity still sounds inevitable, as if no other note could have come next.
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 minor.