Fairest Isle (King Arthur), by Purcell
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 Fairest Isle (King Arthur)
Here it is. Check your inbox for day 1.
- Hear it through at Slow (37 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♭ major. Say the note names out loud the first time through, then play it three times without stopping.
- Find the chords under it: B♭maj7, B♭6, E♭6 and B♭. 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, 37 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (56 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 1 minute) 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
Venus's song in praise of Britain from Purcell's semi-opera King Arthur (1691), with words by John Dryden, here in a four-part version copied by hand in 1827. It is arranged for piano from the choir original, a graceful 3/4 whose melody opens by leaping up from D to F.
How to play it
Let the melody sing and ornament it lightly, like a singer. Keep the 3/4 elegant, with the weight on the first beat and a lighter third beat.
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 #268, in the public domain. Converted to MusicXML by Artform and checked note for note against the original.
More free Purcell sheet music
Who Purcell was
English composer of the Restoration, organist of Westminster Abbey and the finest thing to happen to English music between the Tudors and Elgar, dead at thirty-six with a body of work that includes anthems, theatre music and one short, perfect opera. Dido's Lament is built on a bass line that falls, over and over, the same five notes under everything the singer does, and it is still one of the most devastating things anybody has written with so little material. He was buried beneath the organ he had played, and the country did not produce a composer of his stature again for two hundred years.
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♭ major.