Tambourin
Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) · sheet music
- Key E minor
- Time 2/2
- Levels 9
- Passages 1
Your turn · both hands
Preparing your passage…
Jean-Philippe Rameau, French baroque (1683–1764). The reading release has 1 passage from this piece at level 9; the reader above opens on the easiest, bars 33–36 for both hands together.
The hardest stretch is bars 33–36 at level 9.
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 Tambourin.
- Hands together · bars 33–36 level 9
How to play Tambourin
- Tempo:Choose a lively dance pace that you can keep steady without tension. The two pulses per measure should feel like a drum pattern rather than a race.
- Left hand:The left hand is the drum. Keep the repeated notes even, light, and a little detached, and practice them alone until your forearm is relaxed.
- Right hand:Play the tune with a bright, clear touch, slightly detached. Treat it like a pipe above the drum, with short phrases that breathe.
- Hands together:Join the hands slowly, listening for the drone to stay steady while the tune moves. If the drone starts rushing, drop back to hands separate.
- Dynamics:Use terraced dynamics, softer on repeats and fuller on arrivals, rather than gradual swells. The harpsichord could not swell, so contrast comes from touch and articulation.
- Pedal:Use little or no pedal, so the drone stays crisp. A rare touch of pedal on the final chord is enough.
- Practice:Play the left hand with a metronome and your eyes off the keys. Then add the right hand in short phrases, speeding up in small steps.
Common mistakes
- Letting the left-hand repeated notes get louder and heavier as the piece speeds up. Fix: Keep them quiet and tap from the wrist, not the elbow.
- Playing everything legato, which dulls the drum-and-pipe effect. Fix: Lift each note slightly so the rhythm stays dancing.
- Losing the D sharp leading tone and the chromatic sharps of the second couplet against the unchanging drone. Fix: Circle each sharp outside the key signature and say its name aloud on every slow pass.
Structure: rondeau (refrain with episodes)
The piece is built like a rondeau: a short, catchy refrain keeps coming back, and between its returns come contrasting episodes, called couplets in French music. The whole dance stays in E minor, and the left-hand drone on E and B continues under almost all of it.
- A · Refrain (E minor)
- The piping tune circles in eighth notes and repeated quarters over the open-fifth drone. Learn it well, because it returns several times.
- B · First couplet (E minor)
- The tune turns into short ornamented two-note sighs over the same drone. Read the trill signs and slurs carefully.
- A · Refrain returns
- The opening tune comes back unchanged, a chance to check that your drone is still steady.
- C · Second couplet (E minor)
- A chromatic descent in the tune brings sharps such as A sharp and G sharp, then the left hand drops the drone for chords while the hands trade the running eighth-note figure.
- A · Final returns
- After a further couplet built on wider leaps and running scales, the refrain closes the dance in E minor.
About Tambourin
Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) published the second of his books of harpsichord pieces in 1724, and the nine-movement E minor suite in it ends with a Tambourin followed only by a rondeau called La Villageoise. The tambourin of the title is both a low Provençal drum and a lively duple dance named after it.
The dance imitates the drum with a repetitive bass, and in this harpsichord version the left hand holds an almost continuous open fifth on E and B. The Provençal drum was traditionally played by one musician who also played a small pipe, and Rameau evokes both: a hammered drone below and a light, piping tune above.
Rameau liked the piece enough to reuse it. When he turned to opera in his fifties, he orchestrated the tambourin and the musette from this same suite for the third entrée of Les fêtes d'Hébé, premiered on May 21, 1739 at the Paris Opéra.
- A tambourin is a drum, a Provençal dance, and a pipe-and-tabor pairing in which one player taps the drum and plays a small flute at the same time.
- Rameau did not begin writing operas until he was nearly fifty; his first, Hippolyte et Aricie, premiered in 1733.
- The dancer Marie Sallé performed as Terpsichore in the third entrée of Les fêtes d'Hébé, the act built from the suite's musette and tambourin.
- Rameau published his Treatise on Harmony in 1722, two years before this suite.
Why the first passage is level 9
That passage is level 9 rather than 8 because it leaps a fifth plus an octave.
One graded passage here sits at level 9, in 2/2 with one sharp. The hardest part is keeping an even drone in one hand while the other changes position, so read the left hand as a pattern, not as individual notes.
Questions about Tambourin
- How hard is Tambourin to play?
- Its passages grade from level 9 on Real Sight Reader's ten-level reading scale, so the full piece is intermediate to advanced reading. The hardest stretch is bars 33–36 at level 9.
- Is there an easy part of Tambourin for beginners?
- Its easiest passage is level 9, so it suits a reader past the beginner stage. Start with bars 33–36 for both hands together, the level-9 passage in the reader at the top of this page; it is level 9 because it leaps a fifth plus an octave.
- What key and time signature is Tambourin in?
- Tambourin is in E minor, 1 sharp. The engraving on this page is in 2/2 time.
- Who composed Tambourin?
- Jean-Philippe Rameau, French baroque (1683–1764). Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) published the second of his books of harpsichord pieces in 1724, and the nine-movement E minor suite in it ends with a Tambourin followed only by a rondeau called La Villageoise.
- Can I practice Tambourin online for free?
- Yes. The reader on this page plays any of the one graded passage from Tambourin in your browser, with an on-screen keyboard or a MIDI keyboard, and marks every note as you play. No signup.
- What is a tambourin?
- It is a Provençal drum, a Provençal dance in lively duple meter named after it, and the dance music that imitates the drum with a repeated bass figure.
- Is the Tambourin from an opera?
- It began as a harpsichord piece in 1724. Rameau later orchestrated it for the opera-ballet Les fêtes d'Hébé, which premiered in 1739.
- What suite is the Tambourin in?
- It is the eighth of nine movements in Rameau's Suite in E minor from his 1724 Pièces de clavecin, catalogued as RCT 2, coming just before the closing rondeau La Villageoise.
Every passage, easiest first
The reading release grades one passage of this piece. Open any of them in the reader:
- Level 9
- bars 33–36 both hands
More pieces to sight-read
Score: public-domain engraving from the corpus (pdmx), graded by the piano-reading-v2-20261023-identity-audit reading release.