April: Snowdrop, Op. 37a No. 4, by Tchaikovsky
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How to learn April: Snowdrop, Op. 37a No. 4
- Hear it through at Slow (60 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 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, Fdim7 and Cm. 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, 60 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (90 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 2 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
April is the Snowdrop, the first flower to push through the last snow. Tchaikovsky's B-flat major melody is full of hope and gentle movement, with a slightly darker middle section before the opening returns.
How to play it
Let the melody lean and breathe with a little rubato, as the marking asks. Keep the accompaniment light so the piece never feels heavy.
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 Tchaikovsky sheet music
Where else this one is listed
The same piece, in the lists people search for.
Who Tchaikovsky was
Russian composer whose ballets, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, did more than any other music to make ballet the art form audiences recognize today, though Swan Lake was actually considered a failure at its premiere and only found its now-famous choreography years after his death. He corresponded for over a decade with a wealthy patron, Nadezhda von Meck, who funded him generously on the condition that the two never meet in person, a strange, intense relationship conducted almost entirely by letter. His symphonies and the Piano Concerto No. 1 carry an emotional directness that made him hugely popular in the West even during the Soviet era, when much Russian art struggled to cross…
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.