Easy piano song, sheet music with note names
Clair de Lune piano notes: the opening theme with letters
Clair de Lune piano notes: the opening with letter names and octaves, in D♭ major, 9/8, C4 to A♭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
Clair de Lune on this page is the opening, bars 1 to 8 (upper line of the right hand): 37 notes in 8 bars of 9/8, in D♭ major, with a range of C4 to A♭5 (20 semitones). It begins on A♭5 and ends on C4. 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”.
Clair de Lune at a glance
- Key
- D♭ major (five flats)
- Time signature
- 9/8: nine eighth notes to the bar, counted as three beats of three eighth notes (1-2-3, 4-5-6, 7-8-9)
- Range
- C4 to A♭5, 20 semitones
- Notes and bars
- 37 notes, 8 bars
- First note
- A♭5 (scale degree 5)
- Last note
- C4 (scale degree 7)
- Piece
- Clair de lune, third movement of the Suite bergamasque (L. 75), for piano
- Composer
- Claude Debussy
- Date
- begun around 1890, revised just before publication in 1905
- Marking
- andante très expressif, in compound triple metre (9/8)
- Title
- taken from Verlaine’s poem “Clair de lune” (it is not one of Debussy’s two songs on that poem)
- Part on this page
- bars 1 to 8, upper line of the right hand (a simplification, see below)
- Tempo on this page
- dotted quarter note = 50; the MIDI sound in the Wikipedia article marks dotted quarter note = 50
- 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 (20 semitones); wider than an octave. How the level is worked out
What is on this page
This is a simplification. Only the upper line of the right hand is shown, one note at a time, for the first 8 bars. Debussy writes two-note chords and a second voice in the right hand and a left hand of broken chords and bass notes; the chords of bars 1 to 4 are reduced here to their top note. The first two-note chord of bar 1 is played by the left hand (the edition writes it in the lower staff), so the staff starts with rests. The rest of the piece is not included.
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 dotted quarter note = 50: the MIDI sound in the Wikipedia article marks dotted quarter note = 50.
Clair de Lune
D♭ major · 9/8 · melody with note names · the opening
Key D♭ major (five flats: B♭, E♭, A♭, D♭, G♭) Range C4 to A♭5 Music Claude Debussy (Suite bergamasque, published 1905)
Scale of D♭ major D♭ E♭ F G♭ A♭ B♭ C Middle C is C4, the C nearest the middle of the keyboard
Melody: Mutopia Project, "Suite Bergamasque: Clair de Lune", right hand upper line (Keith OHara) (Public Domain; Mutopia-2010/12/21-1778), checked note by note against 1 other source. Simplified: the opening, bars 1 to 8 (upper line of the right hand). Free to print and share. musictheoryprint.com/charts/clair-de-lune-piano-notes
Clair de Lune: name the notes
D♭ major · 9/8 · 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♭, D♭, G♭. The home note of the key is D♭.
Check your answers against the sheet with the note names. Extra: circle every note that is a D♭, the home note of the key.
Melody: Mutopia Project, "Suite Bergamasque: Clair de Lune", right hand upper line (Keith OHara) (Public Domain). Simplified: the opening, bars 1 to 8 (upper line of the right hand). Free to print and share. musictheoryprint.com/charts/clair-de-lune-piano-notes
The notes of Clair de Lune, bar by bar
37 notes in 8 bars, in D♭ 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | rest rest A♭5 (held) F5 | (rest) (rest) sol (held) mi |
| 2 | F5 E♭5 F5 E♭5 | mi re mi re |
| 3 | E♭5 D♭5 E♭5 D♭5 F5 (held) D♭5 | re do re do mi (held) do |
| 4 | D♭5 C5 D♭5 C5 | do ti do ti |
| 5 | C5 B♭4 C5 B♭4 E♭5 B♭4 A♭4 B♭4 A♭4 | ti la ti la re la sol la sol |
| 6 | A♭4 G♭4 A♭4 G♭4 F4 | sol fa sol fa mi |
| 7 | F4 F4 G♭4 F4 B♭4 F4 E♭4 F4 E♭4 | mi mi fa mi la mi re mi re |
| 8 | E♭4 D♭4 E♭4 D♭4 C4 | re do re do ti |
do re mi uses movable do: do is D♭.
Which keys to press
The tune spans 13 letter names, from C4 to A♭5, 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 36 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: B♭4 (5 times). Longest run of one repeated note: 2. Different pitches: 12, made from 7 note names (some are used in two octaves). Biggest leap: 5 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, "Suite Bergamasque: Clair de Lune", right hand upper line (Keith OHara) (Public Domain; Mutopia-2010/12/21-1778), cut to the opening, bars 1 to 8 (upper line of the 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikimedia Commons, "Debussy - Clair de Lune.mid"uploaded 2019-06-06, SHA-1 1273162051 | CC BY-SA 3.0 de | 419 | 100% | 86% |
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.
Clair de Lune: questions people ask
What are the letter notes of Clair de Lune?
The first notes, with their octave numbers, are A♭5 F5 F5 E♭5 F5 E♭5 E♭5 D♭5 E♭5 D♭5 F5 D♭5. Every note of the opening 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 Clair de Lune in?
On this page it is in D♭ major (five flats), in 9/8: nine eighth notes to the bar, counted as three beats of three eighth notes (1-2-3, 4-5-6, 7-8-9). The five flats of D♭ major are B♭, E♭, A♭, D♭ and G♭; Debussy marks the movement andante très expressif.
Which hand plays what, and how high and low does it go?
The range is C4 to A♭5, 20 semitones. The tune spans 13 letter names, from C4 to A♭5, more than an octave, so the hand has to travel along the keyboard.
Is this the whole of Clair de Lune?
No. Only the first 8 bars of the movement are shown, as a single line. The movement goes on much further (the Mutopia edition marks a tempo rubato section from bar 15); none of that is on this page.
Is Clair de Lune free to print and share?
Clair de lune is the third movement of the Suite bergamasque, which Wikipedia says Debussy began around 1890 and revised just before its publication in 1905. Anything published in the United States in 1930 or earlier is in the public domain there (as of 2026), and the edition used here, the Mutopia Project typesetting of the 1905 E. Fromont edition, is marked Public Domain by its typesetter. Copyright rules differ between countries; check yours if you plan to publish. The sheets are made by this site from that edition and may be printed and shared.
How do I know the notes are right?
The melody is read by a program from Mutopia Project, "Suite Bergamasque: Clair de Lune", right hand upper line (Keith OHara), never typed in. A second program then compares it, note by note and in order, with 1 other source: MIDI file “Debussy - Clair de Lune” (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.
What does 9/8 mean in Clair de lune?
A bar of 9/8 has nine eighth notes. They are felt as three beats of three, counted 1-2-3, 4-5-6, 7-8-9. Wikipedia calls this compound triple metre. Counting the eighth notes aloud is the easiest way to keep the beats.
What does “Clair de lune” mean?
It is French for “moonlight”. Wikipedia says the title is taken from Paul Verlaine’s poem “Clair de lune”; the piece is not one of the two settings of that poem that Debussy wrote for voice and piano.
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Clair de Lune in real music: the numbers
In D♭ major the tune uses 7 of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale, all of them inside the key. It moves by step 28 times out of 36, and ends on degree 7.
This tune against real art songs
| What | This tune | OpenScore Lieder (880 major-key songs) |
|---|---|---|
| First note | A♭5 (degree 5) | 41.7% start on degree 5 |
| Last note | C4 (degree 7) | 0.7% end on degree 7 |
| Range of the tune | 20 semitones (C4 to A♭5) | 87% of 1,458 first vocal lines span fewer semitones, 7% 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 D♭ major is
| Collection | Items with a key | Share in D♭ major | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenScore Lieder | 1,462 | 3.4% | 14 of 24 |
| Mutopia | 1,974 | 0.8% | 17 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 13,669 | 1.1% | 18 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 5,340 | 0.7% | 20 of 24 |
| Open Opus work titles | 3,587 | 0.3% | 21 of 24 |
| AcousticBrainz recordings | 63,124 | 2.7% | 16 of 24 |
Counts of key signatures (and estimated major or minor) in the collections the site has measured; see the key page for D♭ major.
Where the tune sits among singers' ranges
| Voice type (as labelled in the scores) | Typical range of a real song line | This tune (C4 to A♭5) |
|---|---|---|
| Soprano | E♭4 to F5 | wider than this range by 6 semitones |
| Alto / Contralto | C4 to C5 | wider than this range by 8 semitones |
| Tenor | F3 to F♯4 | wider than this range by 7 semitones |
| Baritone | C3 to E4 | wider than this range by 4 semitones |
| Bass | A2 to C4 | wider than this range by 5 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 “Clair de Lune”
Overview
Suite bergamasque (L. 75) is a piano suite by Claude Debussy. He began composing it around 1890, at the age of 28, but significantly revised it just before its 1905 publication. The popularity of the third movement, Clair de lune, has made it one of the composer's most famous works for piano, as well as one of the most famous musical pieces of all time.
3. Clair de lune
The third movement is in D♭ major. It is written in compound triple meter and marked andante très expressif. Its title, which means "moonlight" in French, is taken from Verlaine's poem "Clair de lune". It is not to be confused with the two settings of the poem composed by Debussy for voice and piano accompaniment.
Source: Wikipedia, “Suite bergamasque” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-05-26.
Sources and licences for the text, scores and recordings on this page are on the credits page.
Sources: Mutopia Project, "Suite Bergamasque: Clair de Lune", right hand upper line (Keith OHara), Wikimedia Commons, "Debussy - Clair de Lune.mid", Wikipedia: Suite bergamasque.