Clefsight No keyboard

The library · Collections

Romantic piano pieces

Music from about 1820 to 1900, from Schubert and Chopin to Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Grieg, written for a larger, louder piano and often for playing at home: short pieces with titles that say what they picture, songs without words, waltzes and nocturnes. Here are 107 pieces by 22 composers, easiest first. Each has easier versions made from the score itself (the right-hand melody alone, then with left-hand roots), so you can start a step down and play it as written later.

Pieces
107
Levels
2 to 7
Key signatures
5 flats to 4 sharps
Length
13 to 210 bars

Reading Romantic music

The sustaining pedal, marked under the bass staff: held through a harmony and changed with it, so the left hand's notes ring on under the tune.
Pieces here: Hunting Song, Op. 68 No. 7 (Schumann, level 3); Prelude in E minor, Op. 28 No. 4 (Chopin, level 4); Nocturne No. 10 (Field, level 4).

A left hand that travels: a low bass note, then a chord well above it, and back, two octaves or more across a phrase. Read the bass, then the chord as one shape, and let the pedal hold the bass while the hand moves.
Pieces here: Waltz, D. 969 No. 9 (Schubert, level 3); Prelude in A, Op. 28 No. 7 (Chopin, level 4); Ständchen (Serenade) (Schubert, level 4).

Rubato and the words that ask for it: the tempo slows (rit.) and comes back (a tempo) with the phrase. Clefsight grades against your own steady beat, so learn the notes steady first, then let the phrase breathe.
Pieces here: Arabesque, Op. 100 No. 2 (Burgmüller, level 3); Of Foreign Lands and Peoples, from Kinderszenen (Schumann, level 4); Waltz in B minor (Chopin, level 4).

Character pieces: short pieces with titles, many written for young players and for playing at home, in sets such as Schumann's Album for the Young, Tchaikovsky's Children's Album, Burgmüller's Op. 100 and Mendelssohn's Songs without Words.
Pieces here: The Wild Rider, Op. 68 No. 8 (Schumann, level 3); Old French Song, Op. 39 No. 16 (Tchaikovsky, level 3); Tender Flower, Op. 100 No. 10 (Burgmüller, level 3); Song Without Words in E, Op. 19 No. 1 (Mendelssohn, level 5).

What the scores print

Of each period's pieces in the library, the share whose score prints each kind of sign. Ornament signs fade after the Baroque, as composers wrote out what they wanted, and marks for loudness, pedal and speed grow through the Romantic period.

Baroque
1600–1750		Classical
1750–1820		Romantic
1820–1900		Early 20th century
1900–1945
Ornament signs (trill, mordent, turn)48%26%7%0%
Loud and soft (p, f, crescendo)20%60%78%67%
Pedal marks3%6%27%7%
Slowing and back (rit., a tempo)3%4%32%13%

Level 2

A tune over a simple left hand, mostly in one hand position.

Level 3

Both hands busy, the hand moves around, a sharp or flat or two.

Level 4

Real independence between the hands and more accidentals.

Level 5

The edge of early intermediate: dense textures, fast passages and far keys.

Level 6

Intermediate: the notes of level 5 at concert speed, held even from the first bar to the last.

Level 7

Advanced: études and impromptus, fast and even in both hands for pages at a time, with cross-rhythms.

Composers

Each composer is placed in one period, by when they were writing; one whose working life spans two is placed where most histories place them.

Schubert was Beethoven's younger contemporary in Vienna; histories place him with the Romantics, for his songs and short piano pieces.

John Field, who wrote the first nocturnes from 1812, is placed with the Romantics, for whom the nocturne became a favourite form.

Hymns, carols, popular songs, ragtime, teaching studies and traditional tunes aren't music of a period in this sense, so their composers aren't placed in one, and a hymn tune by a composer placed here is left out too. They have pages of their own: hymns, Christmas music, ragtime, studies and traditional tunes.

Other periods: Baroque piano pieces (1600–1750) · Classical period piano pieces (1750–1820) · Early 20th-century piano pieces (1900–1945)

Open a piece to print any of its versions free, or to play it at your MIDI keyboard with every note marked. New to reading? The level 2 sight-reading exercises are a good warm-up.