Free Flute Sheet Music

Tune of the Day: Wie stark ist nicht dein Zauberton

This famous aria is sung by Tamino in the Finale of Act I of Mozart's opera The Magic Flute. Tamino plays his magic flute in hopes of summoning Pamina and Papageno, and the tones of his instrument summon a group of magically tamed beasts.

How strong is your magic tone!
For, gracious flute, gracious flute,
Through your playing
Even wild animals feel joy.

Then Tamino hears Papageno's pipes, which Papageno is blowing in response to the sound of Tamino's flute. Ecstatic at the thought of meeting Pamina, Tamino hurries off.

Tune of the Day: Largo by Braun

This Largo is the third movement of the last of the six Op. 7 flute sonatas with bass accompaniment by French flutist and composer Jean-Daniel Braun, published in Paris in 1736.

Tune of the Day: The Green Meadow

This jig can be found in Francis O'Neill's collection Music of Ireland, published in Chicago in 1903. O'Neill names as his source for this tune “O'Reilly”, probably blind piper Marin O'Reilly, a contemporary of O'Neill's who won first prize in the pipers' competition at the annual Feis in Dublin in 1901.

It must however be pointed out that the jig is closely related to “Jackson's Walk to Limerick”, a tune which is traditionally attributed to 18th-century gentleman piper Walker ‛Piper’ Jackson.

Tune of the Day: Study in D minor by Köhler

Here is a new étude from the first book of Twenty Easy Melodic Progressive Studies by Italian composer Ernesto Köhler. It starts off in D minor, but visits the keys of G minor, A major, E major and C-sharp minor before returning to the principal key.

Tune of the Day: Wayfaring Stranger

There are many and varied opinions about the origins of this traditional song. Some of the proposed origins are Appalachian folk, old Irish folk, and Catskills folk. One theory is that it originates from the Negro Spirituals, and there was a deliberate concealment of the song's origins. Clearly the song is of a spiritual nature, as the “Wayfaring Stranger” sings of the hardships of his temporal life passing by and refers to his journeying on to a better place.

This song has been recorded countless times, but in the 1940s it became strongly associated with American folk singer Burl Ives, who made it one of his signature songs. Ives even used it as the title of his CBS radio show and his autobiography. For these reasons, Ives is sometimes referred to as “The Wayfaring Stranger”.

Tune of the Day: In the Hall of the Mountain King

This piece of orchestral music was composed by Edvard Grieg for Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt, which premiered in Oslo in 1876, and was later extracted as the final piece of the “Peer Gynt Suite No. 1”, Op. 46.

A fantasy play written in verse, Peer Gynt tells of the adventures of the eponymous Peer. The sequence illustrated by the music of “In the Hall of the Mountain King” is when Peer sneaks into the Mountain King's castle. The piece then describes Peer's attempts to escape from the King and his trolls.

The simple theme begins slowly and quietly in the lowest registers of the orchestra. It is played first by the cellos and bassoons, signifying Peer Gynt's slow, careful footsteps. After being recited, the main theme is then very slightly modified with a few different ascending notes, but transposed up a perfect fifth (to the key of F-sharp major, the dominant key, but with flattened sixth) and played on different instruments: these are the King's trolls.

In order to respect the original key of the piece, we had to make use of low B, which can only be produced on a B foot flute. If your flute has a C foot, or if you find it difficult to play that low, simply transpose up an octave the two phrases that start on a low B. (Remember to revert to the written octaves after the half notes, or you'll run into the fourth register!)

Tune of the Day: The Twopenny Jig

The earliest known appearance of this jig is in the August 1842 edition of the Dublin Magazine, in which collector Henry Hudson remarks:

A merry pipe-tune, for which we are indebted to Paddy Coneely. One of its many rustic names may be said to be “The Two-penny Jig.” When we see a tune genuinely belonging to this class, we always desire to have a drone in the bass, even when arranging it for the piano-forte.