Wagner Overture to the Opera Parsifal, by Wagner
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 Wagner Overture to the Opera Parsifal
Here it is. Check your inbox for day 1.
- Hear it through at Slow (28 bpm). Open it in the reader, choose Slow, and follow the page with your eyes without playing. As it plays, count 4 to the bar.
- Learn the right hand of bars 1 to 8 on its own, in A♭ major. Say the note names out loud the first time through, then play it three times without stopping.
- Find the chords under it: A♭6, Cm, D♭maj7 and E♭7. 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, 28 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (42 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 10 minutes) from the start, at whatever speed keeps it going. A steady run with a few slips beats a fast one that stops.
What kind of piece this is
An overture is the piece that opens an opera or a play, and works on the piano as a summary of everything about to happen.
How to play it
Give the slow introduction real weight before the fast section arrives, or the contrast is wasted.
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 Wagner sheet music
Who Wagner was
German composer whose operas, which he insisted on calling "music dramas," reshaped harmony, orchestration, and the entire idea of what an evening at the theatre could be. The Ring cycle, four full operas meant to be performed across four consecutive nights, and Tristan und Isolde, whose famously unresolved opening chord is still debated by music theorists today, changed the direction of Western music for the century that followed. He built his own opera house in Bayreuth, Germany, specifically to stage his works exactly as he imagined them, and it still hosts a festival devoted entirely to his music every summer.
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 A♭ major.