Green notes: right hand, blue notes: left hand. Preview played right in your browser with the app's real piano (lightweight version). Inside Pianovera: full multi-layer sound, fingering display and Wait mode.
← Swipe the image to read the score →Beginning of the score, engraved by the Mutopia Project.View the whole score (PDF) →
Satie advises playing it "from the tip of the thought" and putting "much sorrow" into it. The third Gnossienne is the most oriental of the three: its scale with augmented seconds hints at an elsewhere that French music of 1890 wasn't supposed to name, and its MIDI unrolls a good five hypnotic minutes.
It's the longest of the set and the most demanding in concentration: nothing is hard, everything must stay even. The grace-note ornaments grow more present, the melody explores the low register, and the urge to speed up lurks on every page. Resist it: the slowness is the point.
Gnossienne No. 3: the first notes
Right hand, in letter names (C4 = middle C): A5 A5 D#5 D#5 F#5 F#5 A4 E5 E5 D#5 D#5 C5 C5 B4 B4 E4 E4 E4 E4 A5 A5 D#5 D#5 F#5… The rest scrolls in the preview above, with the fingering, and the sheet music PDF has the whole piece.
Play Gnossienne No. 3 on the virtual piano
Here are the Gnossienne No. 3 virtual piano notes, in computer keyboard letters: the first 8 bars of the melody. One key per note, read left to right; dark keys are the sharps, and a thin line marks each bar. The melody sounds an octave lower than written, so it fits on the keyboard.
Letters for a QWERTY keyboardYour keyboard: 38 notes
YY;;55EE;;QQ
MMCCC
YY;;55EE;;QQ
MMCMWMMQQ
▶ Play on the virtual pianoThe piano opens with this piece loaded: the key to play lights up and waits for you.
What you'll be working on
The oriental scale and its unusual intervals under the fingers
Five minutes of evenness: the real challenge is mental
Ornaments that color the line without interrupting it
The melody sung low, without heaviness
Playing Gnossienne No. 3 on piano with Pianovera
Use Pianovera's progress bar to work in thirds: the piece is long and memorizes in blocks. The ornaments show up as tight little clusters in the preview, so you see them coming from far away.
Open Gnossienne No. 3 in Pianovera: the notes fall toward an 88-key virtual piano keyboard, each hand gets its color, and Wait mode is there if you're starting out. On a PC, it's falling notes piano software for Windows, with video export up to 4K.
Free, with no time limit and no ads: 30 pieces (10 in full, 20 in a simplified version), the first 10 lessons and 10 minutes of 3D hands (then 15 seconds per piece). Premium opens all 651 pieces.
Download the Gnossienne No. 3 MIDI and sheet music
The work itself is in the public domain. This MIDI engraving comes from the Mutopia Project, typeset by Frédéric Duperray, under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license (free reuse with attribution, commercial included).
About this piece
Is Gnossienne No. 3 hard to play on piano?
We rate it intermediate: 600 notes over 5:24, spanning F#1 to A5. The first thing to work on: the oriental scale and its unusual intervals under the fingers.
Where can I get the sheet music for Gnossienne No. 3?
Right on this page: the "View the sheet music" button opens the PDF (193 KB), engraved by the Mutopia Project from the same source as the MIDI file, CC-BY-SA 4.0 license. View it, print it, keep it.
Is the Gnossienne No. 3 MIDI file really free?
Yes. Erik Satie died more than 70 years ago, so the work (1890) is public domain. This MIDI engraving is under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license: free to use, commercially included, with credit to Frédéric Duperray.
