Easy piano song, sheet music with note names
Chopin Nocturne Op 9 No 2 piano sheet: the opening melody with letters
Chopin Nocturne Op 9 No 2 piano sheet: the opening melody in E♭ major with letter names and octaves, 12/8. 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
Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 on this page is the opening melody (pick-up and bars 1 to 4, right hand): 30 notes in 4 bars of 12/8, in E♭ major, with a range of B♭4 to D6 (16 semitones). It begins on B♭4 and ends on B♭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”.
Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 at a glance
- Key
- E♭ major (three flats)
- Time signature
- 12/8: twelve eighth notes to the bar, counted as four beats of three eighth notes (1-2-3, 4-5-6, 7-8-9, 10-11-12)
- Range
- B♭4 to D6, 16 semitones
- Notes and bars
- 30 notes, 4 bars after a pick-up
- First note
- B♭4 (scale degree 5)
- Last note
- B♭4 (scale degree 5)
- Piece
- Nocturne in E♭ major, Op. 9 No. 2, for piano
- Composer
- Frédéric Chopin
- Set
- three nocturnes written between 1831 and 1832, published in 1832 and dedicated to Madame Marie Pleyel (Wikipedia)
- Length and form
- Wikipedia: 34 measures, in rounded binary form (A, A, B, A, B, A) with a coda
- Part on this page
- the pick-up and bars 1 to 4, right hand (an excerpt, see below)
- Tempo on this page
- eighth note = 132; the Mutopia edition and the 1882 print both mark Andante, eighth note = 132
- 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
- Harder: wider than a major sixth (16 semitones); wider than an octave; sixteenth notes; a leap of a minor sixth or more. How the level is worked out
What is on this page
This is an excerpt. The staff shows the right hand of the first four-bar phrase, with its pick-up: the melody only, one note at a time. The left hand’s widely spaced broken chords, the turn sign in bar 2, the small ornaments of later bars and everything after bar 4 are not included. The last note of bar 4 is the pick-up of the next phrase.
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 eighth note = 132: the Mutopia edition and the 1882 print both mark Andante, eighth note = 132.
Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2
E♭ major · 12/8 · melody with note names · the opening melody
Key E♭ major (three flats: B♭, E♭, A♭) Range B♭4 to D6 Music Frédéric Chopin (Nocturnes, Op. 9, written 1831 to 1832, published 1832)
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, "Nocturne", right hand (Renato Biolcati Rinaldi) (CC BY-SA 3.0; Mutopia-2014/12/18-1590), checked note by note against 1 other source. Simplified: the opening melody (pick-up and bars 1 to 4, right hand). Free to print and share under the same licence, CC BY-SA 3.0. musictheoryprint.com/charts/chopin-nocturne-op-9-no-2-piano-notes
Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2: name the notes
E♭ major · 12/8 · 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, "Nocturne", right hand (Renato Biolcati Rinaldi) (CC BY-SA 3.0). Simplified: the opening melody (pick-up and bars 1 to 4, right hand). Free to print and share under the same licence, CC BY-SA 3.0. musictheoryprint.com/charts/chopin-nocturne-op-9-no-2-piano-notes
The notes of Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2, bar by bar
30 notes in 4 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 | B♭4 | sol |
| 1 | G5 (held) F5 G5 F5 E♭5 B♭4 | mi (held) re mi re do sol |
| 2 | G5 C5 C6 G5 B♭5 A♭5 G5 | mi la la mi sol fa mi |
| 3 | F5 G5 D5 E♭5 C5 | re mi ti do la |
| 4 | B♭4 D6 C6 B♭5 A♭5 G5 A♭5 C5 D5 E♭5 rest B♭4 | sol ti la sol fa mi fa la ti do (rest) sol |
do re mi uses movable do: do is E♭.
Which keys to press
The tune spans 10 letter names, from B♭4 to D6, more than an octave, so the hand has to travel along the keyboard. 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 29 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: G5 (7 times). Longest run of one repeated note: 1. Different pitches: 10, made from 7 note names (some are used in two octaves). Biggest leap: 16 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, "Nocturne", right hand (Renato Biolcati Rinaldi) (CC BY-SA 3.0; Mutopia-2014/12/18-1590), cut to the opening melody (pick-up and bars 1 to 4, right hand). 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Commons scan "Chopin nocturne op9 2a.png" (the first bars of the 1882 Klindworth edition from IMSLP), read by eyeuploaded 2009-05-22, SHA-1 50ccfca99a | Public domain | 30 | 100% | 100% |
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.
Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2: questions people ask
What are the letter notes of Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2?
The first notes, with their octave numbers, are B♭4 G5 F5 G5 F5 E♭5 B♭4 G5 C5 C6 G5 B♭5. Every note of the opening 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 Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 in?
On this page it is in E♭ major (three flats), in 12/8: twelve eighth notes to the bar, counted as four beats of three eighth notes (1-2-3, 4-5-6, 7-8-9, 10-11-12). E♭ major has three flats, B♭, E♭ and A♭. Wikipedia says the accompaniment emphasises the 12 beats to the measure, subdivided into four groups of 3 beats each.
Which hand plays what, and how high and low does it go?
The range is B♭4 to D6, 16 semitones. The tune spans 10 letter names, from B♭4 to D6, more than an octave, so the hand has to travel along the keyboard.
Is this the whole of Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2?
No. It is the first four bars of a nocturne that Wikipedia says is 34 measures long. The melody comes back three more times, with more and more ornaments.
Is Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 free to print and share?
Chopin’s Nocturnes, Op. 9 were published in 1832 according to Wikipedia, so the music is far out of copyright. The edition used here is the Mutopia Project typesetting by Renato Biolcati Rinaldi, made from a G. Schirmer edition of 1881 and licensed CC BY-SA 3.0: the sheets on this page are shared under the same licence, so you can print and share them if you keep the credit line. Other editions, 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, "Nocturne", right hand (Renato Biolcati Rinaldi), never typed in. A second program then compares it, note by note and in order, with 1 other source: the public-domain scan read by eye (100% of its notes). It agrees on every pitch. Where they differ, the page lists every note and bar, so you can see the difference.
How do the first notes go?
A one-note pick-up on B♭4 leads to G5, held for a long time, then F5 G5 F5 E♭5 and back to B♭4. The first twelve notes are B♭4 G5 F5 G5 F5 E♭5 B♭4 G5 C5 C6 G5 B♭5.
Why does bar 4 have such a big jump?
Bar 4 starts on B♭4 and the line leaps up to D6, a distance of 16 semitones (a tenth), then walks back down: C6 B♭5 A♭5 G5. Wikipedia says the melody “contains graceful upward leaps which becomes increasingly wide as the line unfolds”.
How long is the whole nocturne?
Wikipedia says it is 34 measures long and is in rounded binary form (A, A, B, A, B, A) with a coda. The melody is heard three more times, each time with more decorative notes and trills.
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Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 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 17 times out of 29, and ends on degree 5.
This tune against real art songs
| What | This tune | OpenScore Lieder (880 major-key songs) |
|---|---|---|
| First note | B♭4 (degree 5) | 41.7% start on degree 5 |
| Last note | B♭4 (degree 5) | 10.6% end on degree 5 |
| Range of the tune | 16 semitones (B♭4 to D6) | 39% of 1,458 first vocal lines span fewer semitones, 51% 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 (B♭4 to D6) |
|---|---|---|
| Soprano | E♭4 to F5 | wider than this range by 2 semitones |
| Alto / Contralto | C4 to C5 | wider than this range by 4 semitones |
| Tenor | F3 to F♯4 | wider than this range by 3 semitones |
| Baritone | C3 to E4 | fits if moved down 22 semitones |
| Bass | A2 to C4 | wider than this range by 1 semitone |
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 “Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2”
Overview
The Nocturnes, Op. 9 are a set of three nocturnes for solo piano written by Frédéric Chopin between 1831 and 1832, published in 1832, and dedicated to Madame Marie Pleyel. These were Chopin's first published set of nocturnes. The second nocturne of the work is often regarded as Chopin's most famous piece.
No. 2 in E♭ major
Chopin composed one of his most well-known nocturnes, Nocturne in E♭ major, Op. 9, No. 2, when he was around twenty years old. This well-known nocturne is in rounded binary form (A, A, B, A, B, A) with coda, C. It is 34 measures long and written in 12/8 meter, having a similar structure to a waltz.
The A and B sections become increasingly ornamented with each recurrence. The penultimate bar utilizes considerable rhythmic freedom, indicated by the instruction, senza tempo (without tempo). The nocturne opens with a legato melody, mostly played piano (quietly), containing graceful upward leaps which becomes increasingly wide as the line unfolds. This melody is heard again three times during the piece. With each repetition, it is varied by ever more elaborate decorative tones and trills. The nocturne also includes a subordinate melody, which is played with rubato.
A sonorous foundation for the melodic line is provided by the widely spaced notes in the accompaniment, connected by the damper pedal. The waltz-like accompaniment gently emphasizes the 12/8 meter, 12 beats to the measure subdivided into four groups of 3 beats each.
Taipei Metro uses the Nocturne in E♭ major, Op. 9, No. 2 as the train melody for arriving trains on the Songshan–Xindian line.
Source: Wikipedia, “Nocturnes, Op. 9 (Chopin)” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-06-11.
Sources and licences for the text, scores and recordings on this page are on the credits page.
Sources: Mutopia Project, "Nocturne", right hand (Renato Biolcati Rinaldi), Commons scan "Chopin nocturne op9 2a.png" (the first bars of the 1882 Klindworth edition from IMSLP), read by eye, Wikipedia: Nocturnes, Op. 9 (Chopin).