Easy piano song, sheet music with note names
Eine kleine Nachtmusik sheet music: the opening theme with letters
Eine kleine Nachtmusik sheet music: the opening theme of Mozart’s K. 525 with letter names and octaves, G major, 4/4. Play it, print it (A4, 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
Eine kleine Nachtmusik on this page is the opening theme (bars 1 to 10, first violin): 57 notes in 10 bars of 4/4, in G major, with a range of D5 to D6 (12 semitones). It begins on G5 and ends on D6. 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”.
Eine kleine Nachtmusik at a glance
- Key
- G major (one sharp)
- Time signature
- 4/4: four beats to the bar, each a quarter note
- Range
- D5 to D6, 12 semitones
- Notes and bars
- 57 notes, 10 bars
- First note
- G5 (scale degree 1)
- Last note
- D6 (scale degree 5)
- Piece
- Serenade No. 13 in G major, K. 525, first movement (Allegro), for two violins, viola, cello and double bass
- Composer
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Date
- completed in Vienna on 10 August 1787, around the time he was working on the second act of Don Giovanni (Wikipedia)
- Published
- about 1827 by Johann André in Offenbach, over thirty years after Mozart’s death (Wikipedia)
- Part on this page
- the first violin’s bars 1 to 10 (an excerpt, see below)
- Tempo on this page
- quarter note = 120; a steady practice speed chosen for this page; the scores in the Wikipedia articles mark Allegro at 148 and 140
- 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); sixteenth notes. How the level is worked out
What is on this page
This is an excerpt. The staff shows the first violin’s first 10 bars of the first movement: the opening theme, which Wikipedia describes as an ascending Mannheim rocket, and the answering bars. In the opening chord only the top note is shown. The trills on G in bars 6 and 8 are shown as one G (the sign tr is not drawn), and the small grace notes in bars 9 and 10 are left out. The other string parts and everything after bar 10 are not included. The serenade is for strings; a piano plays the same notes.
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 = 120: a steady practice speed chosen for this page; the scores in the Wikipedia articles mark Allegro at 148 and 140.
Eine kleine Nachtmusik
G major · 4/4 · melody with note names · the opening theme
Key G major (one sharp: F♯) Range D5 to D6 Music Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Serenade No. 13, K. 525, completed 10 August 1787)
Scale of G major G A B C D E F♯ Middle C is C4, the C nearest the middle of the keyboard
Melody: Mutopia Project, "Eine kleine Nachtmusik (1st movement)", violin I (Anonymous) (Public Domain; Mutopia-2007/01/01-900), checked note by note against 3 other sources. Simplified: the opening theme (bars 1 to 10, first violin). Free to print and share. musictheoryprint.com/charts/eine-kleine-nachtmusik-notes
Eine kleine Nachtmusik: name the notes
G major · 4/4 · worksheet
Name Date Class
Write the letter name of every note on the line under it. The key signature tells you which notes are sharp: F♯. The home note of the key is G.
Check your answers against the sheet with the note names. Extra: circle every note that is a G, the home note of the key.
Melody: Mutopia Project, "Eine kleine Nachtmusik (1st movement)", violin I (Anonymous) (Public Domain). Simplified: the opening theme (bars 1 to 10, first violin). Free to print and share. musictheoryprint.com/charts/eine-kleine-nachtmusik-notes
The notes of Eine kleine Nachtmusik, bar by bar
57 notes in 10 bars, in G 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 | G5 rest D5 G5 rest D5 | do (rest) sol do (rest) sol |
| 2 | G5 D5 G5 B5 D6 rest | do sol do mi sol (rest) |
| 3 | C6 rest A5 C6 rest A5 | fa (rest) re fa (rest) re |
| 4 | C6 A5 F♯5 A5 D5 rest | fa re ti re sol (rest) |
| 5 | G5 rest G5 B5 A5 G5 | do (rest) do mi re do |
| 6 | G5 F♯5 F♯5 A5 C6 F♯5 | do ti ti re fa ti |
| 7 | A5 G5 G5 B5 A5 G5 | re do do mi re do |
| 8 | G5 F♯5 F♯5 A5 C6 F♯5 | do ti ti re fa ti |
| 9 | G5 G5 F♯5 E5 F♯5 G5 G5 A5 G5 A5 | do do ti la ti do do re do re |
| 10 | B5 B5 C6 B5 C6 D6 | mi mi fa mi fa sol |
do re mi uses movable do: do is G.
Which keys to press
The tune spans 8 letter names, from D5 to D6. 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 56 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 (17 times). Longest run of one repeated note: 2. Different pitches: 8, made from 7 note names (some are used in two octaves). Biggest leap: 7 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, "Eine kleine Nachtmusik (1st movement)", violin I (Anonymous) (Public Domain; Mutopia-2007/01/01-900), cut to the opening theme (bars 1 to 10, first violin). 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; where a source covers only the start of the tune, only that part is compared (it is named in the table).
| Source | Licence | Notes there | Same pitches | Same pitches and lengths |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mutopia Project, "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (full score with parts)", violin I (Mike Blackstock)Mutopia-2018/08/04-2230 | Public Domain | 57 | 100% | 100% |
| Wikipedia, "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" (score 1 in the article)revision 1360374854 of 2026-06-21; compared on bars 1 to 4 of this page | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 18 | 100% | 100% |
| Wikipedia in French, "Une petite musique de nuit" (score 1 in the article)revision 238207785 of 2026-07-29; compared on bars 1 to 10 of this page | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 57 | 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.
Eine kleine Nachtmusik: questions people ask
What are the letter notes of Eine kleine Nachtmusik?
The first notes, with their octave numbers, are G5 D5 G5 D5 G5 D5 G5 B5 D6 C6 A5 C6. Every note of the opening theme 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 Eine kleine Nachtmusik in?
On this page it is in G major (one sharp), in 4/4: four beats to the bar, each a quarter note. G major has one sharp, F♯, which is in the key signature. The first movement is in sonata-allegro form according to Wikipedia, and its second theme is in D major.
Which hand plays what, and how high and low does it go?
The range is D5 to D6, 12 semitones. The tune spans 8 letter names, from D5 to D6. 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 Eine kleine Nachtmusik?
No. It is the first 10 bars of the first of four movements. Wikipedia says the second theme, in D major, comes later in the movement.
Is Eine kleine Nachtmusik free to print and share?
Mozart completed the serenade in 1787, and Wikipedia says it was not published until about 1827, so the music is far out of copyright. The edition used here is the Mutopia Project typesetting of the first movement, 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, "Eine kleine Nachtmusik (1st movement)", violin I (Anonymous), never typed in. A second program then compares it, note by note and in order, with 3 other sources: another Mutopia edition (100% of its notes); Wikipedia's score (100% of its notes, bars 1 to 4); the French Wikipedia score (100% of its notes, bars 1 to 10). 3 of the 3 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 a Mannheim rocket?
Wikipedia says the first movement opens with a theme of an ascending Mannheim rocket. In these notes bar 2 climbs through the notes of a G major chord, G5 D5 G5 B5, up to D6, the highest note of the page.
What does “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” mean?
Wikipedia says the German subtitle literally means “a little night music”. The name comes from the entry Mozart made in his personal catalogue; Wikipedia adds that Mozart was probably not giving the piece a special title but only noting that he had finished a little serenade.
When was it written and published?
Wikipedia says Mozart completed the serenade in Vienna on 10 August 1787, and that it was not published until about 1827, by Johann André in Offenbach am Main.
musictheoryprint.com · free to print and share
Eine kleine Nachtmusik in real music: the numbers
In G major the tune uses 7 of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale, all of them inside the key. It moves by step 21 times out of 56, and ends on degree 5.
This tune against real art songs
| What | This tune | OpenScore Lieder (880 major-key songs) |
|---|---|---|
| First note | G5 (degree 1) | 18.2% start on degree 1 |
| Last note | D6 (degree 5) | 10.6% end on degree 5 |
| Range of the tune | 12 semitones (D5 to D6) | 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 G major is
| Collection | Items with a key | Share in G major | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenScore Lieder | 1,462 | 8.1% | 3 of 24 |
| Mutopia | 1,974 | 14.5% | 2 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 13,669 | 9.8% | 3 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 5,340 | 8.9% | 2 of 24 |
| Open Opus work titles | 3,587 | 8.7% | 3 of 24 |
| AcousticBrainz recordings | 63,124 | 6.7% | 4 of 24 |
Counts of key signatures (and estimated major or minor) in the collections the site has measured; see the key page for G major.
Where the tune sits among singers' ranges
| Voice type (as labelled in the scores) | Typical range of a real song line | This tune (D5 to D6) |
|---|---|---|
| Soprano | E♭4 to F5 | fits if moved down 9 semitones |
| Alto / Contralto | C4 to C5 | fits if moved down 14 semitones |
| Tenor | F3 to F♯4 | fits if moved down 20 semitones |
| Baritone | C3 to E4 | fits if moved down 22 semitones |
| Bass | A2 to C4 | fits if moved down 26 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 “Eine kleine Nachtmusik”
Overview
The Serenade No. 13 in G major, K. 525, popularly known as Eine kleine Nachtmusik, was composed in 1787 for a chamber ensemble by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The German subtitle literally means "a little night music". and it is one of the composer's most famous works.
Background
The serenade was completed in Vienna on 10 August 1787, around the time when Mozart was working on the second act of his opera Don Giovanni. It is not known why he composed it, nor is it known whether it was performed in his lifetime. Wolfgang Hildesheimer, noting that most of Mozart's serenades were written on commission, suggests that this was a commission whose origin and first performance were not recorded.
The traditionally used name of the work comes from the entry Mozart made for it in his personal catalogue, which begins Eine kleine Nacht-Musick. Zaslaw and Cowdery point out that Mozart was probably not giving the piece a special title but only entering in his records that he had completed a little serenade.
I. Allegro
This first movement is in sonata-allegro form. It opens with a theme of an ascending Mannheim rocket. The second theme is more graceful and in D major, the dominant key of G major. The exposition closes in D major and is repeated. The development section begins in D major and touches on D minor and C major before the work returns to G major for the recapitulation.
Source: Wikipedia, “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-06-21.
Sources and licences for the text, scores and recordings on this page are on the credits page.
Sources: Mutopia Project, "Eine kleine Nachtmusik (1st movement)", violin I (Anonymous), Mutopia Project, "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (full score with parts)", violin I (Mike Blackstock), Wikipedia, "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" (score 1 in the article), Wikipedia in French, "Une petite musique de nuit" (score 1 in the article).