Spinning Song, Op. 14 No. 4
Albert Ellmenreich (1816–1905) · sheet music
- Time 2/4
- Levels 2–8
- Passages 6
Your turn · both hands
Preparing your passage…
Albert Ellmenreich, German romantic (1816–1905). The reading release has 6 passages from this piece at levels 2–8; the reader above opens on the easiest, bars 16–17 for the right hand alone.
The hardest stretch is bars 1–8 at level 8.
Your practice path
Learn it the way teachers do: each hand on its own, then together, then the hard bars. Each step is a real graded passage of Spinning Song, Op. 14 No. 4.
- Right hand alone · bars 16–17 level 2
- Hands together · bars 1–4 level 7
- The hardest bars · bars 1–8 level 8
How to play Spinning Song, Op. 14 No. 4
- Aim for a light, quick tempo that feels like a wheel turning smoothly; the sound should be delicate and busy, never heavy.
- Keep the busy spinning figure close to the keys and play it from the fingertips, so the tune can sit clearly above it.
- The trickiest moments are where the repeated pattern breaks off into a melody or a new hand position; practice the bar before and the bar after each change as a unit.
- Practice with alternating fingers on repeated notes if your edition suggests it, and start at half tempo with a metronome, raising it only after you can play several cycles of the pattern without tensing.
Structure
The original is in three parts. A bright opening section introduces the spinning figure and a cheerful tune, a middle section brings a slightly different mood while the wheel keeps turning, and the opening returns to round things off with a short close. The piece lasts around two minutes.
About Spinning Song, Op. 14 No. 4
Albert Ellmenreich was a nineteenth-century German composer who is known today almost entirely for this one piece. It comes from a set of short descriptive piano pieces published as his Op. 14, and it has been a fixture of student recitals and early intermediate anthologies for well over a century.
Why the first passage is level 2
That passage is level 2 rather than 1 because notes come faster than one per beat, it leaps a major third, it moves in eighth notes.
Ellmenreich's Spinning Song imitates a spinning wheel with a fast, busy figure that keeps turning under the tune. The hum of the wheel is a repeated pattern, so once your eye recognises it you only need to read where it changes. It is a classic recital piece for early intermediate pianists.
Questions about Spinning Song, Op. 14 No. 4
- How hard is Spinning Song, Op. 14 No. 4 to play?
- Its passages grade from level 2 to level 8 on Real Sight Reader's ten-level reading scale, so the full piece is intermediate to advanced reading. The hardest stretch is bars 1–8 at level 8.
- Is there an easy part of Spinning Song, Op. 14 No. 4 for beginners?
- Yes. Start with bars 16–17 for the right hand alone, the level-2 passage in the reader at the top of this page; it is level 2 because notes come faster than one per beat and it leaps a major third.
- What key and time signature is Spinning Song, Op. 14 No. 4 in?
- The engraving on this page is in 2/4 time.
- Who composed Spinning Song, Op. 14 No. 4?
- Albert Ellmenreich, German romantic (1816–1905). Albert Ellmenreich was a nineteenth-century German composer who is known today almost entirely for this one piece.
- Can I practice Spinning Song, Op. 14 No. 4 online for free?
- Yes. The reader on this page plays any of the 6 graded passages from Spinning Song, Op. 14 No. 4 in your browser, with an on-screen keyboard or a MIDI keyboard, and marks every note as you play. No signup.
Every passage, easiest first
The reading release grades 6 distinct passages of this piece. Open any of them in the reader:
- Level 2
- bars 16–17 right hand
- Level 7
- bars 1–4 both hands
- Level 8
- bars 1–8 both hands · bars 9–16 both hands · bars 9–12 both hands · bars 13–16 both hands
More pieces to sight-read
Score: public-domain engraving from the corpus (pdmx), graded by the piano-reading-v2-20261001-mutopia-ly reading release.