The Wild Rose, by Johann Strauss II
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Get the practice plan for The Wild Rose
Here it is. Check your inbox for day 1.
- Hear it through at Slow (45 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♭, F7, Em7♭5 and A7. 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, 45 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (68 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
The Wild Rose is a graceful waltz song, credited in Albert E. Wier's The Child's Own Music Book to J. Strauss. Its three-beat lilt carries the flavour of the Viennese waltzes of the nineteenth century.
How to play it
Feel one strong beat and two lighter ones in each bar, like a waltz. The left hand plays bass then chord, chord, so keep that pattern steady and light.
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 Johann Strauss II sheet music
All 10 Johann Strauss II scores →
Who Johann Strauss II was
The Waltz King, and the second Johann Strauss: his father, who wrote the Radetzky March, forbade him a career in music and intended him for a bank. He learned the violin in secret with his mother's help, formed a rival orchestra to his father's, and ended up eclipsing him entirely. The Blue Danube was a flop at its choral premiere and became, in its orchestral form, the second national anthem of Austria. Brahms, asked to sign a fan's autograph, wrote out its opening bars and underneath them, unfortunately not by me.
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.