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Piano sheet music for kids · Classical · Level 1: Right hand, C to G
Ode to Joy
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 4/4, 8 bars. The right hand alone in C position, thumb on middle C, with the finger number above every note and its letter name underneath. Press Play to hear it on a real piano or slow it down; click any note to start from there; print it for the music stand.
The notes in this piece
Your right hand plays five notes in this piece: C, D, E, F, G. The thumb sits on middle C and each finger has its own key, so the hand never moves. The left hand rests in your lap. The shaded keys are the notes, and the numbers under them are the fingers (1 is the thumb). The same finger numbers are printed above every note in the music, with the note’s letter name underneath. What is C position? →
C – D – E – F – G
About this arrangement
The tune from the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (1824), and the first music by a great composer most beginners meet. The right hand plays alone and never leaves C position: thumb on middle C, fingers 1 to 5 on C D E F G, starting on E with finger 3. The tune moves one key at a time the whole way through. What is new is the rhythm at the end of each half: a dotted crotchet (dotted quarter note) followed by a quaver, “long-short”, which gives the tune its lean.
Practice tip: Clap the dotted rhythm in bar 4 before you play it: “lo-ong short, long”. The quaver is quick and leads straight into the next note.
A short history
Friedrich Schiller wrote the poem “An die Freude” (To Joy) in 1785, and Beethoven thought about setting it for most of his life. He finally used it in the last movement of his Ninth Symphony, first performed in Vienna in May 1824, where a choir and four soloists sing it: the first time a major composer had put voices into a symphony.
Beethoven was almost completely deaf by then and had to be turned round at the end of the premiere to see the audience applauding.
The tune has had a second life as a hymn and as the anthem of the European Union, adopted in 1985, and its stepwise shape, moving by step throughout, makes it an ideal first classical piece.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Ludwig van Beethoven, 1824
- Key
- C major, C position
- Time signature
- 4/4
- Length
- 8 bars
- Tempo
- Majestically, crotchet = 100
- Difficulty
- Level 1: Right hand, C to G (piece 10 of 201)
- Type
- Classical
- Hands
- Right hand only, thumb on middle C
- Notes
- C, D, E, F and G (diagram above)
- Copyright
- Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use
Questions and answers
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