Für Elise

About this arrangement

Beethoven’s little piano piece from 1810, perhaps the most famous opening in piano music. It is in A minor and 3/8, three quavers (eighth notes) in a bar, mostly split into semiquavers (sixteenth notes), and starts on two semiquaver pickups. The right hand rocks between E and D sharp, the black key, then runs down to A. In the other bars the two hands take turns: the left hand plays three notes up from a low A or E, and the right hand carries on from there. Both hands are Beethoven’s own, and the eight bars are played twice.

Practice tip: Play the rocking E, D sharp, E very lightly with fingers 5 and 4. Where the hands take turns, make the six semiquavers sound like one smooth line, as if one hand were playing them all.

A short history

Beethoven wrote this short piece in A minor in 1810, but it was not printed until 1867, forty years after his death, when the scholar Ludwig Nohl published it from a manuscript that has since been lost. Nohl said the page was headed “Für Elise am 27 April zur Erinnerung von L. v. Bthvn”: for Elise, on 27 April, as a keepsake from Beethoven.

Nobody knows who Elise was. Researchers have suggested Therese Malfatti, a pupil Beethoven wanted to marry, the singer Elisabeth Röckel and others; one idea is that Nohl simply misread the name.

Beethoven never gave the piece an opus number, so in the catalogue of his works it is WoO 59, a “work without opus number”. Its middle sections are harder, but the opening theme, given here, is one of the best-known pieces of piano music in the world.

Quick facts

Tune

Ludwig van Beethoven, 1810

Key

A minor

Time signature

3/8

Length

8 bars and a pickup, played twice

Tempo

Poco moto, dotted crotchet = 34

Difficulty

Level 6: Moving on (piece 194 of 201)

Type

Classical

Hands

Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left

Copyright

Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use

Questions and answers