Arabeske in C major, Op. 18, by Schumann
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How to learn Arabeske in C major, Op. 18
- Hear it through at Slow (76 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 major. Say the note names out loud the first time through, then play it three times without stopping.
- Find the chords under it: G7, C6, Fmaj7 and Dm. 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, 76 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (114 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.
About this piece
Schumann wrote his Arabeske in Vienna in 1839: a light, flowing rondo in C major whose graceful main theme returns between two minor-key episodes, ending with a slow, dreamy coda marked Zum Schluss.
How to play it
Keep the main theme light and delicate, as marked, with the inner notes shared smoothly between the hands. Take the coda slowly and quietly, letting it drift away.
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 Schumann sheet music
Who Schumann was
German Romantic composer and one of the era's most influential critics, who used his own writing to champion composers he admired, Chopin and the young Brahms among them, before either was widely known. He tended to write in one genre at a time, a year of songs, a year of symphonies, a year of chamber music, as though working an idea until it was exhausted. He married the pianist Clara Wieck against her father's fierce objections, one of classical music's great real-life love stories, and the two remained each other's closest musical critics. His final years were marked by severe mental illness and he died in an asylum, but not before piano cycles like Kinderszenen and Carnaval that still so…
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 major.