Gute Nacht!, Op. 5 No. 7, by Franz
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 Gute Nacht!, Op. 5 No. 7
Here it is. Check your inbox for day 1.
- Hear it through at Slow (33 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 D minor. Say the note names out loud the first time through, then play it three times without stopping.
- 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, 33 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (50 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
An evening song by Robert Franz to words by Eichendorff: the hills and woods sink into the golden dusk, and a little bird in the branches asks after the beloved. The accompaniment throbs in repeated chords over a low D, and the minor-key song closes on a D major chord.
How to play it
The right hand has both the tune and the repeated chords, so keep the chords feather-light and let the top notes sing. Hold the left hand's low octaves quietly beneath them.
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 #585, in the public domain. Converted to MusicXML by Artform and checked note for note against the original.
More free Franz sheet music
Who Franz was
German composer who wrote around three hundred and fifty songs, many of them short, intimate settings of Heine and Burns. Schumann and Liszt both championed his work. Increasing deafness forced him to give up his posts in Halle in later life.
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 D minor.