Home › Tools › Piano Sheet Music for Kids › Swan Lake
Piano sheet music for kids · Classical · Level 5: A wider range
Swan Lake
Free beginner piano sheet music: A minor, 4/4, 8 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 swan theme from Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake (1877), the sad, rising tune an oboe plays as the swans appear. Tchaikovsky wrote it in B minor; here it is in A minor, which has no sharps or flats, so the right hand sits with the thumb on the A above middle C and the little finger on E, and only the thumb has to reach, down to F in bars 3 and 7. The rhythm mixes minims (half notes), dotted crotchets (dotted quarter notes) and runs of quavers (eighth notes). The left hand plays a bass note and a chord, changing in the middle of bars 3 and 4, and the second four bars repeat the first, ending on A.
Practice tip: Hold the long E at the start of each phrase for its full two beats before the quavers climb. Play softly and smoothly, as if an oboe were singing it.
A short history
Tchaikovsky wrote Swan Lake, his first ballet, in 1875 and 1876 for the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, where it opened on 4 March 1877 with choreography by Julius Reisinger. It tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by a sorcerer, and Prince Siegfried, who falls in love with her beside a lake at night.
The first production was not a great success. The ballet became famous only after Tchaikovsky’s death in 1893, when Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov staged a new version at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg in January 1895, and most companies still base their performances on it.
This theme is the sound of the swans throughout the ballet. It is heard as they fly across the sky at the end of the first act and comes back, sung by the oboe over trembling strings and harp, whenever Odette and her swan maidens appear.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, 1877
- Key
- A minor
- Time signature
- 4/4
- Length
- 8 bars
- Tempo
- Moderato, crotchet = 72
- Difficulty
- Level 5: A wider range (piece 148 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
Questions and answers
What key is Swan Lake in?
How long is it?
Is Swan Lake out of copyright?
What is the hardest part?
Can I print it?
← More classical themes · All 201 pieces: piano sheet music for kids
🔒 Runs entirely in your browser: nothing is uploaded and no account is needed. Once loaded, the page and the piano keep working offline.