Ignacy Jan Paderewski Sarabande Op. 14 No. 2, by Paderewski
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 Ignacy Jan Paderewski Sarabande Op. 14 No. 2
Here it is. Check your inbox for day 1.
- Hear it through at Slow (28 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 B minor. Say the note names out loud the first time through, then play it three times without stopping.
- Find the chords under it: Bm7, Em7, F♯7 and C♯m7♭5. 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, 28 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (42 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 3 minutes) from the start, at whatever speed keeps it going. A steady run with a few slips beats a fast one that stops.
What kind of piece this is
A sarabande is a slow dance in three whose weight falls on the second beat, which is what gives it its stately drag.
How to play it
Lean on beat two and let beat one be lighter than instinct wants. The slowness is dignity, not sadness.
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.
Who Paderewski was
Polish pianist who became the most famous musician alive, toured America to a level of hysteria usually reserved for much later kinds of star, and wrote a Minuet in G that he was privately tired of playing before he was forty. Then he stopped, and used the fame for something else: he raised money for Polish relief through the First World War, argued Poland's case to Woodrow Wilson, and in 1919 became prime minister of the country he had been arguing for. He went back to the piano afterwards.
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 B minor.