Sweet and Low, Op.68:2, by Charles Villiers Stanford
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Get the practice plan for Sweet and Low, Op.68:2
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- Hear it through at Slow (39 bpm). Open it in the reader, choose Slow, and follow the page with your eyes without playing. As it plays, count 3 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.
- 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, 39 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (59 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
Sweet and Low, Op.68:2 is a partsong by Charles Villiers Stanford, who lived from 1852 to 1924, first printed in 1898. The words are by Alfred Tennyson. Here the choir's four parts are set on two staves for piano, soprano and alto in the right hand and tenor and bass in the left.
How to play it
Where two voices share a hand, keep the lower one a shade quieter so the upper line carries. Find the pulse first by tapping it, then keep it through every change of note length.
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 Charles Villiers Stanford sheet music
All 20 Charles Villiers Stanford scores →
Who Charles Villiers Stanford was
Irish composer and teacher at the Royal College of Music who taught Vaughan Williams, Holst and many others. He wrote a great deal of church music still sung in cathedrals. He also wrote symphonies, operas and songs.
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.