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Piano sheet music for kids · Classical · Level 6: Moving on
The “Surprise” Symphony
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 2/4, 16 bars. Press Play to hear it on a real piano, slow it down, or hear one hand at a time; click any note to start from there; print it for the music stand.
About this arrangement
The slow-movement theme from Haydn’s Symphony No. 94 (1791), the one with the famous loud chord. It is in 2/4, two beats in a bar, in Haydn’s own key of C major, and it walks mostly in pairs of quavers (eighth notes): C C E E, G G E. The right hand dips below middle C to B and G in bars 4 and 12, with the thumb, and bars 7 and 15 have an F sharp, the black key next to F. Bars 1 to 8 are played softly; bars 9 to 16 are the same notes even more softly, until the very last bar, where the surprise lands: a sudden fortissimo chord in both hands. The left hand plays a bass note on the first beat and a chord on the second.
Practice tip: Count “one and two and” to keep the quavers even and crisp. Hold the surprise back: bars 9 to 15 should be the quietest thing you have ever played, so that the chord in bar 16 really makes people jump.
A short history
Haydn wrote his Symphony No. 94 in G major in 1791, during his first visit to London, for the concerts promoted by the violinist Johann Peter Salomon. It was first played on 23 March 1792 at the Hanover Square Rooms, with Haydn directing from the fortepiano.
The second movement is a set of variations on this plain little theme, played first quietly and then repeated even more quietly, until, at the end of the sixteenth bar, the whole orchestra and the kettledrums crash in with a single fortissimo chord. English audiences called the work the “Surprise”; in German it is the symphony “mit dem Paukenschlag”, with the drum stroke. Asked in old age whether he had done it to wake people who dozed in concerts, Haydn told his biographer Griesinger that he had simply wanted to surprise the public with something new.
Haydn liked the tune enough to quote it again ten years later in his oratorio The Seasons.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Joseph Haydn, 1791
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 2/4
- Length
- 16 bars
- Tempo
- Walking pace, crotchet = 76
- Difficulty
- Level 6: Moving on (piece 173 of 201)
- Type
- Classical
- Hands
- Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left
- Copyright
- Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use
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