Moonlight Sonata is the name unofficially given to a Piano Sonata number 14 in C-sharp minor titled "Quasi una fantasia", featured on Op. 27, number two.
It is a sonata for the piano created by German composer Ludwig van Beethoven. It has been finished in the year 1801 and was intended for Beethoven’s student, countess GiuliettaGuicciardi.
It is a great piano piece, one of the best created and composed by Beethoven. The free Moonlight Sonata piano sheets are simply awesome. They are truly the work of a great artist.
Moonlight Sonata was originally named "Sonata quasi una fantasia", a name also used for the designation of a piece called Op. 27, number one. The translation for this Italian titled is "sonata as a fantasy", as Grove Music Online officially called it. It was called Moonlight Sonata later, in the year 1832.
A critic called Ludwig Rellstab, who was also a poet, reviewed the piece and unofficially called it Moonlight Sonata.
The name stuck throughout centuries, seeing as the remarks from Ludwig Rellstab were adequate. He called the first part of the piano sonata "Quasi una fantasia" to be similar to the shining of the moonlight over a lake, the Lucerne one.
Since 1842, the name Moonlight Sonata was already used and translated into English and even German. The official publications chose to use this name for the piano sonata.
Since the second half of the 1800s, the sonata was known throughout the world as Moonlight Sonata.
The name has been criticized however during the last century, especially since the romantic features of the name are not exactly similar to the expressivity of the sonata.
The emotion from the sonata resembles much more the one of a funeral march than the one of a romantic view of the moon and its shining.
Other critics, however, regarded the name as appropriate, considering it proper etiquette.
The evocation of the title brought over a review from Compton Mackenzie, the founder of "Gramophone".
He helped the intensification of the positivity of the title Moonlight Sonata, saying that there should be no critics that in modern times still think it was an error to call it that way.
This free Moonlight Sonata piano sheet music is represented by three parts, or three movements, are they are called professionally.
The first one is the Adagio sostenuto. It is played in the style of "pianissimo" and slowly becomes "mezzo forte". The second movements are the Allegretto and the Presto agitato.
If you would like to play this masterpiece on the piano, you can do so now. Enjoy the materials of this classic song and download the PDF files below.
