Interactive piano piece
Learn Inquiétude
A restless, flowing miniature from Mendelssohn's first book of Songs Without Words, built on an anxious sixteenth-note figure. The interactive desk loads the restless A minor score and lets you slow any passage to half tempo — ideal for the chromatic inner voices that give this piece its particular sense of unease.
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Press Play for the full piece, or choose Opening and switch to Wait for note for guided right-hand practice.
About the piece
Restlessness in three voices.
Op. 19 No. 5, titled 'Inquietude' (Restlessness) in some editions, is the most agitated piece in Mendelssohn's first book of Songs Without Words, published in 1832. Where the other five pieces in the set tend toward lyricism or gentle rocking, No. 5 in A minor drives forward relentlessly, its triplet-laden texture giving the impression of anxious motion that never fully settles.
Mendelssohn was twenty-three when Op. 19 appeared and already celebrated across Europe following his sensational revival of Bach's St. Matthew Passion three years earlier. The Songs Without Words were a new genre he effectively invented: intimate piano miniatures that capture a single emotional state as precisely as a poem, without requiring the pianist to be a virtuoso. 'Inquietude' shows that the range of those states included turbulence as well as calm.
Practice path
Tame the triplets before raising the tempo.
The continuous triplet motion in the accompaniment must be controlled before the melodic voice can sing through it. Practice the left hand alone at 50% tempo, making each triplet group absolutely even, then add the right hand and listen for the melody rising above the texture rather than blending into it. The section loop is especially useful around the chromatic passage in the middle of the piece where the harmony shifts most unexpectedly.
Score basis: Generated MusicXML from Mutopia MIDI. Public domain composition; Public Domain; MusicXML generated for Pianodemy. Attribution: Mutopia Project (https://www.mutopiaproject.org/ftp/Mendelssohn-BartholdyF/O19/5.Inquietude/).
MIDI source: Mutopia Project (https://www.mutopiaproject.org/ftp/Mendelssohn-BartholdyF/O19/5.Inquietude/). Public Domain.
Questions
Before you practice.
Short answers for learners and for searchers deciding whether this is the right version to start with.
01What does Inquiétude mean in music?
The French word means unease or restlessness. Mendelssohn uses the title to describe the agitated, perpetual-motion character of the running sixteenth-note figure that runs through the piece.
02How long is Mendelssohn's Inquiétude?
The piece spans 86 measures in 6/4 time, which makes it a mid-length Songs Without Words entry — substantial enough for a solid practice session but compact enough to memorise in stages.
How to use this V1
Drive forward but keep the pulse.
Resist the urge to rush — the sense of restlessness should come from the relentless triplet pattern, not from accelerating tempo. Set a metronome at a comfortable eighth-note pulse and hold it steady throughout. Once the hands are coordinated, a very slight overall crescendo into the climax and a controlled decrescendo out of it will shape the piece without disrupting its underlying urgency.