Easy piano song, sheet music with note names
Brahms’ Lullaby piano notes: letters and easy sheet music
Brahms Lullaby piano notes: the voice melody with letter names and octaves, in E♭ major, 3/4, E♭4 to E♭5. Play it and print it (A4 and Letter PDF).
Two kinds of page: the tune with a letter name under every note, and a worksheet with the names left blank.
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Quick answer
Brahms' Lullaby on this page is the melody of the song (voice part): 51 notes in 16 bars of 3/4, in E♭ major, with a range of E♭4 to E♭5 (12 semitones). It begins on G4 and ends on E♭4. Below: the letter names with octave numbers, the notes on the staff, a version you can play, a note-name worksheet and the checks that were run. It is a simplified melody: what is left out is listed under “What is on this page”.
Brahms' Lullaby at a glance
- Key
- E♭ major (three flats)
- Time signature
- 3/4: three beats to the bar, each a quarter note
- Range
- E♭4 to E♭5, 12 semitones
- Notes and bars
- 51 notes, 16 bars after a pick-up
- First note
- G4 (scale degree 3)
- Last note
- E♭4 (scale degree 1)
- Piece
- Wiegenlied (“Lullaby”, “Cradle Song”), Op. 49 No. 4, for voice and piano
- Composer
- Johannes Brahms
- Published
- November 1868, by Simrock
- Dedication
- to his friend Bertha Faber, on the birth of her second son
- First public performance
- 22 December 1869 in Vienna: Luise Dustmann (voice) and Clara Schumann (piano)
- Basis
- Brahms based the music partly on “S’Is Anderscht”, a duet by Alexander Baumann published in the 1840s
- Tempo on this page
- quarter note = 80; the Mutopia arrangement for recorder and guitar marks a slow waltz at quarter note = 80
- Hands
- Right hand: the melody shown on the staff. The left hand is not shown on this page; play the tune with the right hand alone, or add any simple bass notes.
- Level
- Medium: wider than a major sixth (12 semitones); a leap of a minor sixth or more. How the level is worked out
What is on this page
The staff shows the vocal melody of the song, in E♭ major as in the edition used, without the piano part. Many easy arrangements put the lullaby in another key; the notes keep their shape and only the starting note moves.
Press a note on the staff to hear it. The sound is made in your browser from the notes of this page (a plain synthesiser, not a recording). Normal speed is quarter note = 80: the Mutopia arrangement for recorder and guitar marks a slow waltz at quarter note = 80.
Brahms' Lullaby
E♭ major · 3/4 · melody with note names
Key E♭ major (three flats: B♭, E♭, A♭) Range E♭4 to E♭5 Music Johannes Brahms, Wiegenlied, Op. 49 No. 4 (published 1868)
Scale of E♭ major E♭ F G A♭ B♭ C D Middle C is C4, the C nearest the middle of the keyboard
Melody: Mutopia Project, "Wiegenlied", voice (森 章吾) (Public Domain; Mutopia-2007/11/04-1037), checked note by note against 4 other sources. Free to print and share. musictheoryprint.com/charts/brahms-lullaby-piano-notes
Brahms' Lullaby: name the notes
E♭ major · 3/4 · worksheet
Name Date Class
Write the letter name of every note on the line under it. The key signature tells you which notes are flat: B♭, E♭, A♭. The home note of the key is E♭.
Check your answers against the sheet with the note names. Extra: circle every note that is a E♭, the home note of the key.
Melody: Mutopia Project, "Wiegenlied", voice (森 章吾) (Public Domain). Free to print and share. musictheoryprint.com/charts/brahms-lullaby-piano-notes
The notes of Brahms' Lullaby, bar by bar
51 notes in 16 bars, after a pick-up, in E♭ major. Each note is a letter and an octave number: C4 is middle C, the C nearest the middle of the keyboard, and the numbers go up by one at every C. The ♯ and ♭ mean the black key above or below the letter. “held” means a tied note that is not played again; “rest” is silence.
| Bar | Right hand (melody) | do re mi |
|---|---|---|
| pick-up | G4 G4 | mi mi |
| 1 | B♭4 G4 G4 | sol mi mi |
| 2 | B♭4 rest G4 B♭4 | sol (rest) mi sol |
| 3 | E♭5 D5 C5 | do ti la |
| 4 | C5 B♭4 F4 G4 | la sol re mi |
| 5 | A♭4 F4 F4 G4 | fa re re mi |
| 6 | A♭4 rest F4 A♭4 | fa (rest) re fa |
| 7 | D5 C5 B♭4 D5 | ti la sol ti |
| 8 | E♭5 rest E♭4 E♭4 | do (rest) do do |
| 9 | E♭5 C5 A♭4 | do la fa |
| 10 | B♭4 G4 E♭4 | sol mi do |
| 11 | A♭4 B♭4 C5 | fa sol la |
| 12 | B♭4 E♭4 E♭4 | sol do do |
| 13 | E♭5 C5 A♭4 | do la fa |
| 14 | B♭4 G4 E♭4 | sol mi do |
| 15 | A♭4 G4 F4 | fa mi re |
| 16 | E♭4 | do |
do re mi uses movable do: do is E♭.
Which keys to press
The tune spans 8 letter names, from E♭4 to E♭5. A hand in one five-finger position covers five, so the hand has to shift position (or stretch) at least once; an octave is eight letter names. Try the notes on the virtual piano or press a note on the staff above to hear it.
What the tune is made of
How the melody moves
Each of the 50 moves from one note to the next, counted.
Which note lengths it uses
Every note counted by its length, as a fraction of a whole note.
Most-used note: G4 (10 times). Longest run of one repeated note: 2. Different pitches: 8, made from 7 note names (some are used in two octaves). Biggest leap: 12 semitones.
How the notes were checked
Not one note on this page was typed in or remembered. The melody is read by a program from Mutopia Project, "Wiegenlied", voice (森 章吾) (Public Domain; Mutopia-2007/11/04-1037). A second program then looked for the same notes, in the same order, in each of the sources below, which were typeset or encoded by other people. The number is the share of this page’s notes that are found there, whatever key the other source is in.
| Source | Licence | Notes there | Same pitches | Same pitches and lengths |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia, "Wiegenlied (Brahms)" (score 1 in the article)revision 1355367951 of 2026-05-21 | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 51 | 100% | 100% |
| Wikimedia Commons, "Guten Abend, gut Nacht (Wiegenlied).mid"uploaded 2020-10-31, SHA-1 59340beef0; in another key, compared after moving it by -1 semitones | CC0 | 51 | 100% | 92% |
| Wikimedia Commons, "Guten Abend, gut Nacht.mid"uploaded 2020-10-31, SHA-1 98e9b22bb1; in another key, compared after moving it by -1 semitones | Public domain | 54 | 100% | 84% |
| Mutopia Project, "Cancion de Cuna (arr. for recorder and guitar, in C)" (Diego Guillen)Mutopia-2014/08/05-481; in another key, compared after moving it by -3 semitones | Public Domain | 54 | 100% | 94% |
The second column is lower than the first because editions write the same long notes in different ways (a half note and a tied pair, a held last note) and because performance MIDI files shorten or lengthen notes. Pitch is the part that matters for the letter names. A MIDI file of a whole piano piece does not say which notes are the melody, so the program takes the highest note at each moment; a melody note that sits under a higher accompaniment note can be missed, and that is the usual reason for a “no matching note” above.
Brahms' Lullaby: questions people ask
What are the letter notes of Brahms' Lullaby?
The first notes, with their octave numbers, are G4 G4 B♭4 G4 G4 B♭4 G4 B♭4 E♭5 D5 C5 C5. Every note of the voice melody is in the table above, one bar per row (middle C is C4, the C nearest the middle of the keyboard; the next C up is C5).
What key and time signature is Brahms' Lullaby in?
On this page it is in E♭ major (three flats), in 3/4: three beats to the bar, each a quarter note. E♭ major, three flats (B♭, E♭, A♭), is the key of the edition used. Other editions use other keys: the two MIDI files used in the check are in D major, and the Mutopia arrangement for recorder and guitar is in C major, with the same tune.
Which hand plays what, and how high and low does it go?
The range is E♭4 to E♭5, 12 semitones; 3.4% of the first vocal lines in the OpenScore Lieder Corpus have a smaller range and 89.9% a larger one. The tune spans 8 letter names, from E♭4 to E♭5. A hand in one five-finger position covers five, so the hand has to shift position (or stretch) at least once; an octave is eight letter names.
Is this the whole of Brahms' Lullaby?
Yes, for the melody: the 16 bars and the pick-up are the whole tune of the first verse, and the second verse uses it again. The piano part and the words are not printed on this page.
Is Brahms' Lullaby free to print and share?
Brahms’ Wiegenlied was first published in 1868, so the music is free to use. The edition used here is the Mutopia Project typesetting of the voice and piano score, marked Public Domain. The sheets are made by this site and may be printed and shared. Modern arrangements and recordings have their own rights.
How do I know the notes are right?
The melody is read by a program from Mutopia Project, "Wiegenlied", voice (森 章吾), never typed in. A second program then compares it, note by note and in order, with 4 other sources: Wikipedia's score (100% of its notes); MIDI file “Guten Abend, gut Nacht (Wiegenlied)” (100% of its notes); MIDI file “Guten Abend, gut Nacht” (100% of its notes); another Mutopia edition (100% of its notes). 4 of the 4 agree with this page on every pitch. Where they differ, the page lists every note and bar, so you can see the difference.
What is the Brahms Lullaby called in German, and what is its first line?
It is the Wiegenlied (“cradle song”), Op. 49 No. 4, and it begins “Guten Abend, gut’ Nacht”. It is a song for voice and piano by Johannes Brahms; the melody on this page is the voice part.
Who was the Brahms Lullaby written for?
Wikipedia says Brahms dedicated it to his friend Bertha Faber on the birth of her second son, that he had been in love with her in his youth, and that he shaped the melody to suggest, as a hidden counter-melody, a song she used to sing to him. It was published by Simrock in November 1868.
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Brahms' Lullaby in real music: the numbers
In E♭ major the tune uses 7 of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale, all of them inside the key. It moves by step 18 times out of 50, and ends on the home note, as 75% of major-key art songs do.
This tune against real art songs
| What | This tune | OpenScore Lieder (880 major-key songs) |
|---|---|---|
| First note | G4 (degree 3) | 32.5% start on degree 3 |
| Last note | E♭4 (degree 1) | 75.1% end on degree 1 |
| Range of the tune | 12 semitones (E♭4 to E♭5) | 3% of 1,458 first vocal lines span fewer semitones, 90% more |
The art-song numbers are for the first vocal line of every major-key song whose key signature does not change; the numbers for this tune are counted on the melody printed above.
How common E♭ major is
| Collection | Items with a key | Share in E♭ major | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenScore Lieder | 1,462 | 8.7% | 2 of 24 |
| Mutopia | 1,974 | 4.0% | 9 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 13,669 | 5.8% | 8 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 5,340 | 5.6% | 10 of 24 |
| Open Opus work titles | 3,587 | 7.4% | 6 of 24 |
| AcousticBrainz recordings | 63,124 | 3.7% | 13 of 24 |
Counts of key signatures (and estimated major or minor) in the collections the site has measured; see the key page for E♭ major.
Where the tune sits among singers' ranges
| Voice type (as labelled in the scores) | Typical range of a real song line | This tune (E♭4 to E♭5) |
|---|---|---|
| Soprano | E♭4 to F5 | fits as written |
| Alto / Contralto | C4 to C5 | fits if moved down 3 semitones |
| Tenor | F3 to F♯4 | fits if moved down 9 semitones |
| Baritone | C3 to E4 | fits if moved down 11 semitones |
| Bass | A2 to C4 | fits if moved down 15 semitones |
Typical range = the median across song lines of the lowest and highest notes (ignoring one stray note each side), from 285 vocal lines in the OpenScore Lieder Corpus. "Fits" means both ends of the tune are inside it.
Method
- This tune's own numbers are counted by a script on the decoded melody (tied notes counted once, rests ignored).
- Art-song numbers are read from the files behind the site's statistics pages (OpenScore Lieder Corpus: key and scale-degree counts for the first vocal line of every piece, vocal ranges of 1,458 lines).
- Key counts for Mutopia and MusicBrainz come from the same published statistics; a key is counted from its key signature.
Data: computed from the OpenScore Lieder Corpus (CC0), 1,462 scores. Snapshot: commit 6b2dc542ce (2026-04-07).
Background
Excerpts from open reference works, reproduced as published (references, images and tables removed). Every excerpt names its source, licence and original article.
About “Brahms' Lullaby”
Overview
"Wiegenlied" ("Lullaby"; "Cradle Song"), Op. 49, No. 4, is a lied for voice and piano by Johannes Brahms which was first published in 1868. It is one of the composer's most famous pieces.
History
Brahms based the music of his "Wiegenlied" partially on "S'Is Anderscht", a duet by Alexander Baumann published in the 1840s. The cradle song was dedicated to Brahms's friend, Bertha Faber, on the occasion of the birth of her second son. Brahms had been in love with her in her youth and constructed the melody of the "Wiegenlied" to suggest, as a hidden counter-melody, a song she used to sing to him. Simrock published Brahms's Op. 49 in November 1868. The lullaby was first performed in public on 22 December 1869 in Vienna by Luise Dustmann (singer) and Clara Schumann (piano).
Melody
In 1877, Brahms based the second theme of the first movement of his Second Symphony on the lullaby's tune. The melody is first introduced in bar 82 and continues to develop throughout the movement.
Source: Wikipedia, “Wiegenlied (Brahms)” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-05-21.
Sources and licences for the text, scores and recordings on this page are on the credits page.
Sources: Mutopia Project, "Wiegenlied", voice (森 章吾), Wikipedia, "Wiegenlied (Brahms)" (score 1 in the article), Wikimedia Commons, "Guten Abend, gut Nacht (Wiegenlied).mid", Wikimedia Commons, "Guten Abend, gut Nacht.mid", Mutopia Project, "Cancion de Cuna (arr. for recorder and guitar, in C)" (Diego Guillen).