Love songs for piano

Love songs, and pieces written for someone loved, to read at the keyboard: Elgar's Salut d'amour, his engagement present to Caroline Alice Roberts in 1888; Schubert's Ständchen, a serenade sung to a lover at night; the Waltz in A flat, Op. 69 No. 1, which Chopin gave Maria Wodzińska in 1835 as they parted; Grieg's Erotik, a love poem without words from the Lyric Pieces; Liszt's Liebestraum No. 3 in an easy arrangement; and the Habanera from Bizet's Carmen, whose words say love is a rebellious bird. Around them are old love songs still sung: Annie Laurie, Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes, Greensleeves and Scarborough Fair, with Schumann's Little Romance and Für Elise, whose Elise no one has named for certain. Romantic in the other sense, the music of about 1820 to 1900, has its own page. Each piece has easier versions made from the score itself, starting with the melody alone.

Pieces: 12
Levels: 2 to 5
Key signatures: 4 flats to 4 sharps
Length: 16 to 161 bars

Playing a love song

Most of these were songs first, and the tune is the singer's: it should sound over everything else. Read the tune alone first, with the right hand, until you can sing it in your head, then add the accompaniment under it more softly. Where both are in the right hand, as in Salut d'amour and Ständchen, the top note of each chord is the tune: play it a little deeper into the key than the notes below it.

A song breathes where its words do, at the end of each line. Learn the notes at a steady beat first, since Clefsight grades against your own beat, then let the last note of each phrase take its full length before the next line begins. The easier versions start with the melody alone, if the two hands together feel busy.