Free Flute Sheet Music

Tune of the Day: The Good Fellow

This tune appears in Daniel Wright's Compleat Collection of Celebrated Country Dances (printed in London in 1740 by John Johnson), as well as in the 3rd edition of John Walsh's Second Book of the Compleat Country Dancing Master (London, 1735). A broadside ballad was set to the air, one version of which can be found in Thomas D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy (1707), under the title “The Town Gallant”.

Let us drink and be merry, dance, joke, and rejoice,
With claret and sherry, theorbo and voice;
The changeable world to our joy is unjust,
All treasure's uncertain, then down with your dust:
In frolicks dispose of your pounds, shillings and pence,
For we shall be nothing one hundred years hence.

Tune of the Day: Study in C major by Karg-Elert

Today we propose the first étude from Sigfried Karg-Elert's 30 Caprices: a “Gradus ad Parnassum” of the modern technique for flute solo.

Tune of the Day: Vivace by Telemann

This binary-form, 2/4-time Vivace is the fourth and last movement of the fourth of Telemann's Sonates sans Basse à deux Flutes traverses, ou à deux Violons, ou à deux Flutes à bec, or “Sonatas without Bass for Two Transverse Flutes, or Two Violins, or Two Recorders”.

Thanks to Raquel for suggesting this piece!

Tune of the Day: Elégie

This piece was perhaps one of the most popular melodies in Europe of the fin de siècle, the last decades of the nineteenth century, often referred to as the Belle Epoque (literally, “Beautiful Era”). Massenet originally composed “Élégie” in 1866 for a piano cycle titled Dix pièces de genre. In 1872, he incorporated the piece into Les Erinnyes (The Furies), a play by Leconte de Lisle.

“Elégie” gained even greater renown as a song for voice and piano, set to a poem by Louis Gallet, with the title “O doux printemps d'autrefois” (“O sweet spring of days long ago“).

Tune of the Day: Dan Rogers' Jig

The earliest appearance of this jig is found in Francis O'Neill's collection Music of Ireland, published in Chicago in 1903.

Tune of the Day: Sarabande

In the fixed structure of Bach's Cello Suites, the fourth movement of each suite is always a sarabande. This triple meter dance originated during the sixteenth century as a wildly exuberant dance song in Latin America, before becoming one of the most popular dances of the Baroque.

Initially a light, cheerful dance of moderately quick tempo, the sarabande went through many changes during the Baroque period. The late seventeenth-century form, used extensively in France and Germany, was much slower, more deliberate, and serious, with a heavy accent on the second pulse of the measure. Composers often provided heavy written-out embellishments for this slow sarabande.

Tune of the Day: The First Noel

This traditional English carol, also known as “The First Nowell”, is most likely from the 18th century. The now popular com­bin­a­tion of tune and lyr­ics first ap­peared in print in a collection of Christmas carols published in 1833. The melody is unusual among English folk melodies in that it consists of one musical phrase repeated twice, followed by a variation on that phrase. It is thought to be a corruption of an earlier melody sung in a church gallery setting; because of its repetitive nature, it probably began as a descant to another melody, or possibly as parts of other tunes.

Here the word “Noel” (or “Nowell”) comes from the French Noël, meaning “Christmas”, from the Latin natalis, “birth”. It may also be from the Gaulish words noio or neu meaning “new”, and helle, meaning “light”, referring to the winter solstice (December 21), when sunlight begins overtaking darkness.