Free Flute Sheet Music

Tune of the Day: Duet in E minor by Hugues

This is duet No. 10 from the first volume of Luigi Hugues's La scuola del flauto (The School of the Flute).

Thanks to Paolo for contributing this piece!

Tune of the Day: Siciliana

The siciliana (or “siciliano”, or “sicilienne”) is a dance often included as a movement within larger works of music starting in the Baroque period. It can be in a slow 6/8 or 12/8 time, with lilting rhythms making it somewhat resemble a slow jig, and is usually in a minor key. It was used for arias in Baroque operas, and often appeared as a movement in instrumental works. The siciliana is traditionally associated with pastoral scenes and melancholy emotion.

The siciliana we present today was written by one of the greatest prodigies in musical history: the Italian baroque composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. It is a slow and gentle piece which has become somewhat popular among flutists and violinists.

Tune of the Day: The Lads of Dunse

The Scottish town of Duns is located in the historic county of Berwickshire, in the Borders region. Directions for the dance to this tune were written down in 1752 by John McGill, dancing master in Girvan (Ayrshire), for his students. McGill is sometimes credited with the composition, although Scottish and English sources predominate, and it was printed in England long before McGill's dance, in John Walsh's Compleat Country Dancing-Master (1731) as “The Ladds of Dunce”.

Tune of the Day: Study in D major by Gariboldi

This is étude No. 12 from Italian Romantic composer Giuseppe Gariboldi's collection of 30 Etudes faciles et progressives.

Tune of the Day: La Soliciteuse

Here is another duet from Joseph Bodin de Boismortier's 55 Easy Pieces, Op. 22. This is a light binary-form piece in D major.

Tune of the Day: Maple Leaf Rag

Published in 1899, “Maple Leaf Rag” was the first of Scott Joplin's piano pieces to be issued with his name, and his name only, listed as the composer. It is also one of the most famous of all ragtime pieces, and the first instrumental piece to sell over one million copies of sheet music.

“Maple Leaf Rag” is in many ways the prototypical Joplin rag, and a large number of the rags he later wrote are mere imitations of it. It is still a favorite of ragtime pianists, and has been described as an “American institution... still in print and still popular”. It also appears in the soundtracks of hundreds of films, cartoons, commercials, and video games.

Tune of the Day: The Yellow Wattle

This jig is taken from Francis O'Neill's collection The Dance Music of Ireland, published in Chicago in 1907. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th strains correspond to the version found in the mid-19th-century manuscript by uilleann piper and collector James Goodman. The first strain, seemingly not replicated in any other versions, is reminiscent of the first strain of O'Neill's “Church Hill”. O'Neill identifies his source as fiddler and patrolman Timothy Dillon, originally from County Kerry, who may have adapted that part and prefixed it to a three-part setting of “The Yellow Wattle”.