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Piano sheet music for kids · Classical · Level 5: A wider range
Morning Mood (Peer Gynt)
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 6/8, 8 bars. Press Play to hear it on a real piano, slow it down, or hear one hand at a time; click any note to start from there; print it for the music stand.
About this arrangement
The sunrise from Grieg’s Peer Gynt music (1875), the tune the flute plays and the oboe answers an octave lower. It is in 6/8, two big beats in a bar, like Row, Row, Row Your Boat, and uses only five notes: C D E G A. Grieg wrote it in E major; here it is C major. The right hand plays the first phrase high, with the thumb on the C above middle C, then plays the same four bars again in C position, an octave lower, just as Grieg’s oboe does. Bars 2 and 6 have four semiquavers (sixteenth notes), D E D E, and in bars 3 and 7 the little finger reaches up to A. Grieg’s oboe phrase slips away into a new key at its end; here it comes home to C instead. The left hand plays a bass note and a chord on each big beat.
Practice tip: Think of the first beat as “G E D” and the second as “C D E”, one big beat each. Play it as smoothly as you can, as if the sun were coming up slowly, and make the second phrase softer than the first.
A short history
Edvard Grieg wrote the music for Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt in 1874 and 1875, at Ibsen’s request, and the play opened with it in Christiania (now Oslo) on 24 February 1876. “Morgenstemning” (Morning Mood) was the prelude to the fourth act, and despite the Norwegian fjords people picture, the sunrise it paints is in the Moroccan desert, where Peer has been left stranded.
Grieg later picked out the best numbers for two orchestral suites; Morning Mood opens Suite No. 1, Op. 46, published in 1888, which is how most people have heard it. The melody passes between the flute and the oboe, uses only the five notes of a pentatonic scale, and builds to a full-orchestra sunrise before settling again.
It has been used in countless films and cartoons as shorthand for a new day.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Edvard Grieg, 1875
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 6/8
- Length
- 8 bars
- Tempo
- Peacefully, dotted crotchet = 58
- Difficulty
- Level 5: A wider range (piece 166 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
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