Hello and welcome. I'm Joseph Hoffman and
today we are going to learn one of the
most famous classical pieces of all time
“Für Elise”. The great Ludwig van Beethoven
composed “Für Elise” a little over 200 years
ago in Vienna, and then dedicated it to a
mysterious woman named Elise. In German
“Für Elise” means for Elise, and who was
this woman Elise. No one knows, but as you
listen to “Für Elise”, you can get some
hints about how Beethoven felt about her.
By the end of this video you're going to
be playing one of the most famous,
beloved classical piano pieces of all
time. By the way this “Für Elise” tutorial
is my intermediate Level Four tutorial,
which is ideal for anyone with about four
or more years experience with piano. In
this tutorial we'll be learning
Beethoven's original version of the “Für Elise”
main theme. To help you master this song,
I highly recommend that you get the
accompanying sheet music for this
tutorial, which is available for purchase
online at the Hoffman Academy store. Or, if
you're a Premium Member of Hoffman Academy, the
sheet music is free included with your
premium membership. If you have less than
three or four years experience, you may
want to check out my easy, Level One
tutorial or my super easy Preparatory
Level tutorial. Finally, if you're a
really experienced pianist with five or six
years of training or more, and you'd like
to learn Beethoven's full, advanced
version of “Für Elise”, which is much
longer and has four additional sections,
then check out my Level Six tutorial. Ok,
let's come to the piano and start
learning. So, first let's check out the
sheet music, and one thing that's
different about my tutorials, is I love
to analyze the music before I start to
learn to play it and you'll find that
that's useful. You'll actually be able to
learn it faster if you understand what
the chords are and how they're working
together to build the music then you'll
be able to learn it and memorize it
faster. So,
you see here in the beginning this
opening, main “Für Elise” theme, but then
starting right here as we get to that A,
now we've got this kind of arpeggio. Not
kind of, it is an arpeggio which actually
is a chord. And then it goes to this
measure, which arpeggiate's through another
chord, which leads to this measure, which
arpeggiate's yet another chord. So, what I'd
like you to do is figure out what are
those chords. Now, if you don't know how
to analyze chords that's okay, just
figure out the letter names of each note.
So I'd like you to pause the video, and
if you have the sheet music, which I
recommend that you download from our
website and there's a link below this
video where you can do that, get the
sheet music for this lesson and write in
the letter names of the notes you see in
these three measures, press pause to
figure out those notes, and if you can't
figure out the chords do that too, and
then press play and I'll go over the
answer with you.
Okay, let's check out this first measure
that I asked you to analyze and here are
all the letter names of those notes, and
you'll notice kind of a pattern. They're
all A's and C's and E's, and they're kind of in
somewhat of a mixed up order, but if you
put those three letters together, that is
the A-minor chord, which is the key of
“Für Elise”, so we could also call that the
i chord, which is written like this in
roman numerals. We use lowercase because
it's minor. Now, going on to this measure,
here are the correct answers for all the
notes.
And you'll see again some patterns we've
done.
E E G-sharp E G-sharp B. E G-sharp B is the E-major chord, which we can write like this,
and the roman numeral is V. That is
the V chord, called so because E is a
fifth above A so a is our root or tonic
of the i chord, and E is the root of
the V chord, which is also called the
dominant. So we have tonic, to dominant, and
then in this measure, what do we have?
Here are the letter names for those
notes. Once again you'll see all these
A's and C's and E's. What chord is that? Well
that's our tonic or i chord again. Or A-minor, chords have a lot of names, we could
call that tonic or i or A-minor. We're in
the key of A-minor so that makes it the
i chord. Okay so from the beginning, say
it with me i chord, V chord,
i chord. And then you'll see on this
next line, once again i chord, V chord,
and then these two notes don't really,
well this C doesn't belong in the chord, but
then we go ...