Interactive piano piece
Learn Sonata in C major, K. 545
Mozart's famous "easy" sonata teaches scales, balance, articulation, and clean phrase endings. An interactive score with playback, section loops, tempo control, a clickable piano, and wait-for-note mode makes this page a practice desk that rewards the slow, careful work the Sonata facile actually demands.
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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
The sonata Mozart wrote for beginners that only sounds easy.
Mozart entered the Sonata in C major, K. 545, in his personal catalogue on 26 June 1788, describing it as 'für Anfänger' — for beginners. He wrote it in Vienna during one of the most difficult periods of his life: his finances were in serious trouble, his wife Constanze was unwell, and three of his six children had already died in infancy. Despite the circumstances, the sonata is a model of clarity and good humour. It was not published until 1805, fourteen years after Mozart's death, and the title 'Sonata facile' or 'Sonata semplice' — easy sonata — attached to it in publishers' catalogues rather than by Mozart himself.
The first movement is in C major and follows sonata form with a precision that makes it almost a textbook illustration of the structure: an exposition that modulates to G major, a development section that touches briefly on darker keys, and a recapitulation that returns to C major for the themes. The famous opening theme — a rising arpeggiated figure answered by a scalar descent — is built from the simplest materials of tonal music. The left hand provides an Alberti bass throughout most of the movement, the broken-chord accompaniment that late eighteenth-century composers used so frequently that Clementi reportedly complained it had become a cliché. Mozart's Alberti bass never feels formulaic because the right-hand melody above it is always interesting.
Teachers have used K. 545 as a teaching piece for almost as long as it has been in print, and that pedagogical familiarity has created a paradox: students often find the piece more difficult than it appears. The even tone required in the Alberti bass, the clean articulation of the right-hand scales, and the control needed to keep the melody singing without the accompaniment swamping it are genuine technical challenges. The piece is simple in the sense that it uses simple materials — but simple materials need to be executed with perfect evenness, and that takes longer than most beginners expect.
Practice path
Alberti bass steady, melody above it clear.
The movement divides naturally into the exposition (the first half, modulating to G major), the development (a short passage touching minor keys), and the recapitulation (returning to C major). The opening eight bars contain almost everything the movement will use; once these are fluent and even, the rest follows the same logic with slight variations.
The left hand must be practiced alone until the Alberti bass pattern — bass note, top note, middle note — is completely automatic and even in dynamics. Only when it disappears from conscious attention can the right-hand melody be brought in above it and given its proper singing quality. Practice each eight-bar phrase as a unit, not bar by bar, so the shape of the phrase is always in the ear.
Score basis: Generated MusicXML from Mutopia MIDI. Public domain composition; CC BY-SA 3.0 Mutopia typesetting; prototype MusicXML generated for Pianodemy. Attribution: Mutopia Project, Mutopia-2013/09/01-998, IMSLP source.
MIDI source: Mutopia Project, Mutopia-2013/09/01-998. CC BY-SA 3.0 / Mutopia distribution.
How to use this V1
Make the Alberti bass invisible before adding the tune.
Practice the left-hand Alberti bass alone at 50% tempo for each section until it requires no deliberate effort. At 75%, add the right hand and listen for balance: the melody should be noticeably louder than the accompaniment at all times. Wait-for-note mode is useful for the scalar passages in the right hand where even finger pressure is easy to lose; loop individual phrases at 60–70% until the scales are as smooth as the opening arpeggios. Do not rush to full tempo — the movement sounds clear and confident when it is slightly slower than feels comfortable, and muddy when it is pushed.