The following is a list of the most downloaded pieces of sheet music during the last week. The rankings are computed on a seven-day rolling basis, and exclude all downloads that occurred while the tunes were featured on the homepage. The popularity score shown on the right is basically a measure of how many times a given tune has been downloaded during the past week, normalized against the average number of downloads during the same period. In other words, it shows how many times more popular a piece is than the average piece. Search Tunes Bach Rimsky-Korsakov Pachelbel Merkus
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We can imagine how hollow tubes of bones and wood might have started out being used to imitate birds or as aids for communicating while hunting. But as a new voice with notes moving in clearly defined steps it is not a huge leap to see that these first instruments would have been a significant part of an exploration of different kinds of musical scales: the basis for all organised sound throughout history. As a melodic tool, the flute shares many aspects of other musical instruments, but one of its unique qualities is a vocal character which has been explored by composers through the ages. Looking at the selection of music in this programme, you can hear the aria-like way in which J. Virtuoso qualities exploited by flautists also take their instrument beyond the range and abilities of the human voice, and 18th- and 19th-century audiences loved hearing familiar songs and operatic arias taken into stratospheric marvels of bravura display. The flute has gained in sophistication from its humble origins as a perforated tube. This elegantly designed jumble of rods and pads was developed to make the flute a truly chromatic instrument, capable of playing in all musical keys without having to change instruments or resort to inhuman contortions and combinations of fingerings and blowing angles just to obtain certain notes while in a particular key. The challenge is to turn this ancient activity into music with a fluency and panache which conceals the basic nature of the instrument and all of those years of mechanical study and perfecting of technique, something which Mozart appears to have found lacking in his wealthy flute-playing clients.
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The flutes are one of the oldest instruments, as the earliest flutes have been estimated to be over 40, years old. The modern flute, as many of the instruments used in nowadays, was developed during the classical period , during which the flute was also permanently tied to the orchestras used in concertos and symphonies. Read: How to Learn Flute. Take some time to listen to these 10 beautiful pieces of classical flute music listed in no particular order. These 12 Fantasias for solo flute are unique among other pieces of classical flute music in the sense that they include movements that would normally seem impossible for a solo flute, like fugues and passacaglias. Although his music had some properties that made him stand out from the rest of the composers of his era, still, the rules and traditions taught by his father were never abandoned.
No ifs or buts about it. So, without further ado Another piece that requires impeccable technique and incredible control from flute players, it evokes wonderfully the erratic chortles and frenzied leaps in pitch of a bird that can be heard every day in countryside locales and back gardens. A favourite in the Mozart concerto repertoire, the Flute Concerto No. The chirpy opening melody is a typically catchy Mozart ditty, and it sets the mood for a concerto that showcases the instrument as well as any. All three movements have sublime late-Romantic French melodies — tinged with interesting twists and turns, and backed by colourful harmonies — and the second movement especially is one of the most achingly sad and beautiful of all tunes in the flute repertoire. The turn-of-the-century Reinecke concerto is epic, and lets the usually-restrained flautist feel more like a virtuosic violinist or pianist with its incredible dramatic range and lyrical melodies. It was last concerto the German composer Carl Reinecke wrote, and has been applauded for being as Brahmsian as flute players get the chance to be by Gramophone writer Geoffrey Norris. Written in , the one-movement work is gorgeously lyrical and satisfying for performer and listener alike.
