Free Flute Sheet Music

Tune of the Day: Song to the Moon

Antonín Dvořák's opera Rusalka was composed in 1901, and based on the fairy tales of Karel Jaromír Erben and Božena Němcová. A Rusalka is in fact a water sprite of Slavic mythology, usually inhabiting a lake or river. This is one of the most successful Czech operas, and represents a cornerstone of the repertoire of Czech opera houses.

Arguably the most popular excerpt of this opera is Rusalka's aria “Song to the Moon” from Act I. The good-natured old Spirit of the Lake, Jezibab, is enjoying the singing of the Wood Nymphs, when his daughter, Rusalka, approaches him sadly. She tells him that she has fallen in love with a handsome young prince and wishes to become human in order to know the bliss of union with him. Deeply saddened, the Spirit of the Lake consents to her request, and leaves. All alone, Rusalka sings this beautiful aria, confiding in the moon the secrets of her longing.

Tune of the Day: The Captain's Lady

The earliest appearance of this jig is in John Anderson's A Selection of the most Approved Highland Strathspeys, published in Edinburgh in 1789. The tune was later adopted in Ireland, and can notably be found in Francis O'Neill's early-20th-century collections under the title “Tie the Petticoat Tighter”.

Tune of the Day: Study in E minor by Gariboldi

This is étude No. 19 from Italian Romantic composer Giuseppe Gariboldi's collection of 30 Etudes faciles et progressives.

Tune of the Day: Piacevole non largo by Telemann

This is the second movement of Georg Philipp Telemann's fourth Canonic Sonata for two flutes. It is marked “Piacevole non largo”, which could be translated as “pleasant (but) not slow”.

Tune of the Day: Nocturne in C-sharp minor

This popular nocturne was composed by Frédéric Chopin in the year 1830 for solo piano and dedicated to his older sister, Ludwika Chopin. First published 26 years after the composer's death, the piece is also known by its tempo marking of “Lento con gran espressione” (“Slow with great expression”), or by the popular appellation “Reminiscence”.

The piece is featured in Roman Polanski's 2002 film The Pianist. It is played twice by the protagonist Adrien Brody as Władysław Szpilman, both times at the recording studio at Warsaw Radio at the beginning and the end of the film.

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.