Easy piano song, sheet music with note names
Swan Lake piano sheet music: the Swan Theme with letter names
Swan Lake piano sheet music: the famous Swan Theme of Tchaikovsky’s ballet with letter names and octaves, B minor, 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
Swan Lake on this page is the Swan Theme (first 8 bars of the oboe melody, act 2): 36 notes in 8 bars of 4/4, in B minor, with a range of G4 to F♯5 (11 semitones). It begins on F♯5 and ends on B4. 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”.
Swan Lake at a glance
- Key
- B minor (two sharps)
- Time signature
- 4/4: four beats to the bar, each a quarter note
- Range
- G4 to F♯5, 11 semitones
- Notes and bars
- 36 notes, 8 bars
- First note
- F♯5 (scale degree 5)
- Last note
- B4 (scale degree 1)
- Piece
- the oboe theme of Swan Lake, act 2, No. 10: Scène (Moderato), by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
- Ballet
- composed 1875 to 1876; first performed by the Bolshoi Ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow on 4 March 1877 (Wikipedia)
- Reception
- Wikipedia says that despite its initial failure it is now one of the most popular ballets of all time
- Part on this page
- the first 8 bars of the oboe melody as one line (an excerpt, see below)
- Tempo on this page
- quarter note = 80; the LilyPond source of the main edition marks Moderato maestoso, 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
- Easy: wider than a major sixth (11 semitones). How the level is worked out
What is on this page
This is an excerpt. The staff shows the first 8 bars of the melody that the oboe plays in act 2 (No. 10, Scène: Moderato), the tune known as the Swan Theme, as one line. The orchestra’s accompaniment and the later sections of the scene are not included. A piano needs no oboe: the notes are the same.
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 LilyPond source of the main edition marks Moderato maestoso, quarter note = 80.
Swan Lake
B minor · 4/4 · melody with note names · the Swan Theme
Key B minor (two sharps: F♯, C♯) Range G4 to F♯5 Music Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (ballet composed 1875 to 1876, first performed 1877)
Scale of B minor B C♯ D E F♯ G A Middle C is C4, the C nearest the middle of the keyboard
Melody: Wikimedia Commons, "Theme lac des cygnes hautbois.svg" (the LilyPond source printed on the file page) (Public domain; file page revision 1092482367 of 2025-09-29), checked note by note against 1 other source. Simplified: the Swan Theme (first 8 bars of the oboe melody, act 2). Free to print and share. musictheoryprint.com/charts/swan-lake-piano-notes
Swan Lake: name the notes
B minor · 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♯, C♯. The home note of the key is B.
Check your answers against the sheet with the note names. Extra: circle every note that is a B, the home note of the key.
Melody: Wikimedia Commons, "Theme lac des cygnes hautbois.svg" (the LilyPond source printed on the file page) (Public domain). Simplified: the Swan Theme (first 8 bars of the oboe melody, act 2). Free to print and share. musictheoryprint.com/charts/swan-lake-piano-notes
The notes of Swan Lake, bar by bar
36 notes in 8 bars, in B minor. 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 | F♯5 B4 C♯5 D5 E5 | sol do re ri fa |
| 2 | F♯5 D5 F♯5 D5 | sol ri sol ri |
| 3 | F♯5 B4 D5 B4 G4 D5 | sol do ri do si ri |
| 4 | B4 (held) E5 D5 C♯5 | do (held) fa ri re |
| 5 | F♯5 B4 C♯5 D5 E5 | sol do re ri fa |
| 6 | F♯5 D5 F♯5 D5 | sol ri sol ri |
| 7 | F♯5 B4 D5 B4 G4 D5 | sol do ri do si ri |
| 8 | B4 B4 | do do |
do re mi uses movable do: do is B.
Which keys to press
The tune spans 7 letter names, from G4 to F♯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 35 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: D5 (11 times). Longest run of one repeated note: 2. Different pitches: 6. 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 Wikimedia Commons, "Theme lac des cygnes hautbois.svg" (the LilyPond source printed on the file page) (Public domain; file page revision 1092482367 of 2025-09-29), cut to the Swan Theme (first 8 bars of the oboe melody, act 2). 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia in Japanese, "白鳥の湖" (score 2 in the article)revision 108630522 of 2026-03-04; compared on bars 1 to 7 and the first 3 beats of bar 8 of this page | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 35 | 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.
Swan Lake: questions people ask
What are the letter notes of Swan Lake?
The first notes, with their octave numbers, are F♯5 B4 C♯5 D5 E5 F♯5 D5 F♯5 D5 F♯5 B4 D5. Every note of the Swan 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 Swan Lake in?
On this page it is in B minor (two sharps), in 4/4: four beats to the bar, each a quarter note. B minor has two sharps in its key signature, F♯ and C♯, and both are used in this theme.
Which hand plays what, and how high and low does it go?
The range is G4 to F♯5, 11 semitones. The tune spans 7 letter names, from G4 to F♯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 Swan Lake?
No. It is the first 8 bars of one melody from act 2 of a ballet that Wikipedia lists as 29 numbers in four acts. The source of the main edition goes on after these 8 bars with a contrasting section marked B and further sections.
Is Swan Lake free to print and share?
Wikipedia says the ballet was composed in 1875 to 1876 and first performed in 1877, so the music is far out of copyright. The notes are read from the LilyPond source that Cdang printed on the Wikimedia Commons page of an SVG score (marked public domain there) and checked against the score in the Japanese Wikipedia article (CC BY-SA 4.0). The sheets are made by this site and may be printed and shared; keep the credit line. Modern arrangements and recordings have their own rights.
How do I know the notes are right?
The melody is read by a program from Wikimedia Commons, "Theme lac des cygnes hautbois.svg" (the LilyPond source printed on the file page), never typed in. A second program then compares it, note by note and in order, with 1 other source: the Japanese Wikipedia score (100% of its notes, bars 1 to 7 and the first 3 beats of bar 8). It agrees on every pitch. Where they differ, the page lists every note and bar, so you can see the difference.
What is the Swan Theme?
It is the melody that the oboe plays in act 2 of Swan Lake. In the list of numbers in Wikipedia it is No. 10, Scène: Moderato. The page on Wikimedia Commons that holds the main edition calls it the oboe theme of the Swan Lake from Tchaikovsky (1876), act II no. 10.
Is the oboe line the piano part?
No. In the ballet the oboe plays the tune over the orchestra. This page shows the tune only, one note at a time, so you can play it with the right hand; the first twelve notes are F♯5 B4 C♯5 D5 E5 F♯5 D5 F♯5 D5 F♯5 B4 D5.
When was Swan Lake composed and first performed?
Wikipedia says Tchaikovsky composed the ballet in 1875 to 1876 and that the Bolshoi Ballet gave the first performance on 4 March 1877 at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Despite its initial failure, Wikipedia says it is now one of the most popular ballets of all time.
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Swan Lake in real music: the numbers
In B minor the tune uses 6 of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale, all of them inside the key. It moves by step 10 times out of 35, and ends on degree 1.
This tune against real art songs
| What | This tune | OpenScore Lieder (352 minor-key songs) |
|---|---|---|
| First note | F♯5 (degree 5) | 46.6% start on degree 5 |
| Last note | B4 (degree 1) | 59.4% end on degree 1 |
| Range of the tune | 11 semitones (G4 to F♯5) | 2% of 1,458 first vocal lines span fewer semitones, 97% more |
The art-song numbers are for the first vocal line of every minor-key song whose key signature does not change; the numbers for this tune are counted on the melody printed above.
How common B minor is
| Collection | Items with a key | Share in B minor | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenScore Lieder | 1,462 | 2.5% | 18 of 24 |
| Mutopia | 1,974 | 1.5% | 16 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 13,669 | 3.1% | 14 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 5,340 | 2.4% | 15 of 24 |
| Open Opus work titles | 3,587 | 2.6% | 14 of 24 |
| AcousticBrainz recordings | 63,124 | 2.2% | 18 of 24 |
Counts of key signatures (and estimated major or minor) in the collections the site has measured; see the key page for B minor.
Where the tune sits among singers' ranges
| Voice type (as labelled in the scores) | Typical range of a real song line | This tune (G4 to F♯5) |
|---|---|---|
| Soprano | E♭4 to F5 | fits if moved down 1 semitone |
| Alto / Contralto | C4 to C5 | fits if moved down 6 semitones |
| Tenor | F3 to F♯4 | fits if moved down 12 semitones |
| Baritone | C3 to E4 | fits if moved down 14 semitones |
| Bass | A2 to C4 | fits if moved down 18 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 “Swan Lake”
Overview
Swan Lake (Лебединое озеро) is a ballet composed by Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1875–76. Despite its initial failure, it is now one of the most popular ballets of all time.
The scenario, initially in two acts, was based on Russian and German folk tales, telling a story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse.
Composition process
Tchaikovsky's excitement with Swan Lake is evident from the speed with which he composed: commissioned in the spring of 1875, the piece was created within one year. His letters to Sergei Taneyev from August 1875 indicate, however, that it was not only his excitement that compelled him to create it so quickly but his wish to finish it as soon as possible, so as to allow him to start on an opera. Respectively, he created scores of the first three numbers of the ballet, then the orchestration in the fall and winter, and was still struggling with the instrumentation in the spring. By April 1876, the work was complete. Tchaikovsky's mention of a draft suggests the presence of some sort of abstract but no such draft has ever been seen. Tchaikovsky wrote various letters to friends expressing his longstanding desire to work with this type of music, and his excitement concerning his current stimulating, albeit laborious task.
Source: Wikipedia, “Swan Lake” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-05-30.
Sources and licences for the text, scores and recordings on this page are on the credits page.
Sources: Wikimedia Commons, "Theme lac des cygnes hautbois.svg" (the LilyPond source printed on the file page), Wikipedia in Japanese, "白鳥の湖" (score 2 in the article), Wikipedia: Swan Lake.