Free Flute Sheet Music

Tune of the Day: The Thieving Magpie

When do you write the overture to your opera? According to Italian composer Gioachino Rossini, you should wait for inspiration until the evening before the opening night, because “nothing primes inspiration more than necessity”. Fortunately for him, Rossini was famous for his writing speed. His opera La gazza ladra (literally, The Thieving Magpie) was no exception. It was reported that the producer had to lock Rossini in a room the day before the first performance in order to write the overture. Rossini then threw each sheet out of the window to his copyists, who wrote out the full orchestral parts.

This overture makes a few appearances in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, and has also provided the background score for many television and radio commercials. It also appears during the famous baby-switching scene in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America.

Tune of the Day: Billy McCormick

This jig first appeared in Chicago Police Captain Francis O'Neill's collection The Dance Music of Ireland, published in 1907.

Tune of the Day: Study in A-flat major by Andersen

Here is another étude by Danish flutist Joachim Andersen. This Andantino in A-flat major is study No. 17 from his Twenty-Four Etudes for Flute, Op. 33.

Tune of the Day: Allegro assai by Telemann

Here is the third and last movement of Georg Philipp Telemann's sixth Canonic Sonata for two flutes. This lively “Allegro assai” in 3/8 time starts and ends in the key of A minor, but has a central section in the parallel major key of A major.

Tune of the Day: Two Menuettos

Is Flute Sonata in C major, BWV 1033, truly by a Bach? And if so, which Bach? This is one of three “Bach” flute sonatas of questionable attribution; the earliest surviving copy was made by Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel, who may simply have been serving as his father's copyist.

The work falls into four movements, in something of the chamber sonata style but without explicitly naming any dance patterns until the ending fourth movement, which is actually a pair of graceful minuets. Typically for this format, the second is capped by a terse repeat of the first.

Tune of the Day: Munster Bacon

This lively jig first appeared in Francis O'Neill's collection Dance Music of Ireland, published in Chicago in 1907.

Munster is the largest of the four provinces of Ireland, located in the south west of the island.

Tune of the Day: Study in D major by Gariboldi

Here is another simple étude from Giuseppe Gariboldi's collection of 30 Etudes faciles et progressives. If you can't reach the low E-C# passage (measures 5-6, 21-22, 45-46), you can play both notes one octave higher.