Dream About Silent Night - Nielsen CNW 85, by Nielsen
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 Dream About Silent Night - Nielsen CNW 85
Here it is. Check your inbox for day 1.
- Hear it through at Slow (25 bpm). Open it in the reader, choose Slow, and follow the page with your eyes without playing. As it plays, count 2 big beats to the bar.
- Learn the right hand of bars 1 to 8 on its own, in E major. Say the note names out loud the first time through, then play it three times without stopping.
- Find the chords under it: E6, D♯7, E♯m7♭5 and G♯6. 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, 25 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (37 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
A short piano piece Carl Nielsen wrote in 1905, a dream on Glade jul, the Danish Silent Night. The carol drifts through soft, shifting harmony, as if half remembered.
How to play it
Keep it hushed and let the tune everyone knows come through the texture on its own.
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 Nielsen sheet music
Who Nielsen was
Danish composer who grew up one of twelve children in a poor family on Funen, learned the violin from his housepainter father, and played in village dance bands before a military band and a conservatory found him. His six symphonies argue with themselves in a way nothing else of the period does; in the fourth, two sets of timpani try to derail the piece from opposite sides of the stage. Denmark put him on its hundred-kroner note, which is a reasonable summary of what the country thinks of him.
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 E major.