Free Flute Sheet Music

Tune of the Day: The Dashing White Sergeant

“The Dashing White Sergeant” was originally a song written by English composer, conductor and arranger Sir Henry Rowley Bishop, and published in the mid-1820s. Perhaps because of its title, the tune was quick to enter British military repertoire as a march; the melody was soon adapted for dancing, however, becoming nearly as popular in America as it was in England.

The present arrangement for two flutes is taken from Blake's Young Flutist's Magazine, published in Philadelphia in 1833.

Tune of the Day: Gigue by Paul Merkus

Today's piece was kindly contributed to our collection by its composer, Paul Merkus from the Netherlands. It is the third movement of a small suite for flute and piano, comprising a Prelude, a Sarabande and this Gigue.

Tune of the Day: Captain O'Kane

this air is thought to have been composed by blind Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan (1670–1738) for his friend Captain O'Kane (or O'Kain or O'Cahan), a “sporting” Irishman of a distinguished County Antrim family who was well known in his day as “Slasher O'Kane”. O'Carolan authority Donal O'Sullivan could find no attribution in any source to O'Carolan, but says the style is his and he generally accepts it as a composition of the bard's. Tune collector Francis O'Neill (1913) quotes Patrick O'Leary, an Australian correspondent, who wrote that the Captain of the title was “the hero of a hundred fights, from Landon to Oudenarde, who, when old an war-worn, tottered back from the Low Countries to his birthplace to die, and found himself not only a stranger, but an outlawed, disinherited, homeless wanderer in the ancient territory that his fathers ruled as Lords of Limavady.”

The song “The Wounded Hussar” was written to the melody by Alexander Campbell and appears in Smith's Irish Minstrel (Edinburgh, 1825). From its lyrics we learn that Captain Henry O'Kain died of his wounds “on the banks of the dark rolling Danube”.

Scots poet Robert Burns wrote his song “The Chevalier's Lament” (1788) to the tune of “Captain O'Kean”.

Tune of the Day: Study in G major by Hugues

Today's piece is the twenty-ninth study from 40 Nuovi Studi, Op. 75, by Italian flutist, composer and arranger Luigi Hugues.

This study has also been published as the nineteenth piece in a selection of 24 Studies for Flute from Hugues's Opp. 32 and 75.

Tune of the Day: Duet in D major by Berbiguier

This piece is the nineteenth duet from Trente-six Petits Duos Mélodiques Faciles et Chantants pour deux Flûtes (36 Easy Flute Duets) by French Romantic composer Benoit Tranquille Berbiguier.

Tune of the Day: Largo by Bellinzani

This is the third movement of the third sonata from Sonate a flauto solo con cembalo, o violoncello (“Sonatas for solo flute with harpsichord or cello”) by Italian Baroque composer Paolo Benedetto Bellinzani, originally published in Venice in 1720.

Tune of the Day: All I Want is a Decent Boy

This air is taken from Francis O'Neill's collection Waifs and Strays of Gaelic Melody, published in Chicago in 1922. O'Neill had the tune from O'Farrell's Pocket Companion for the Irish or Union Pipes (published between 1804 and 1811), and remarked:

The name of a ballad sung to this air has been substituted for “The Young Man's Dream” an obviously wrong title — as printed in O'Farrell's work.