Halloween is the one night of the year when minor keys rule the piano. This free collection gathers the 15 spookiest pieces in the public domain – from the medieval Dies Irae chant that horror movies still quote, to Bach’s Toccata in D minor, Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King and Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre – and arranges every one of them for beginner hands: five-finger positions, a left hand that plays single notes almost throughout, and printed fingerings in every score.

Each piece comes in the same format as our free beginner sheet music library: the story behind the music, a note-by-note hand position guide, the score split into two learnable sections, and a 3-step practice plan (right hand, left hand, hands together).

The 15 Spooky Pieces

Level	What you learn	Pieces	How to get it
1 – First Frights	Five-finger melodies, one slow bass note at a time	Dies Irae, The Hearse Song, Ah Poor Bird, Chopin’s Funeral March, Aase’s Death	Free download – no email
2 – Haunted Hands Together	Walking single-note bass under singing melodies	Gnossienne No. 1, Greensleeves, Moonlight Sonata, Swan Lake, Wayfaring Stranger	Free with email
3 – Midnight Classics	Accidentals, position shifts, real drama	Mountain King, Danse Macabre, Toccata in D minor, Night on Bald Mountain, Lacrimosa	Free with email

Level 1 – First Frights (Free Download)

Five pieces in A minor, on white keys apart from one G-sharp in Ah, Poor Bird and in Aase’s Death. The Hearse Song never leaves one five-finger position; Dies Irae, Aase’s Death, the Funeral March and Ah, Poor Bird move the hand to new positions, marked in the fingering. The left hand plays single notes, mostly whole and half notes – if you can find A on the keyboard, you can start tonight. It opens with the Dies Irae, the 13th-century chant that became film music’s favorite sound of doom – here is what Dies Irae means and where you’ve heard it.

Why These Arrangements Work for Beginners

• One five-finger position at a time. Eight of the fifteen pieces start in the A minor hand position – thumb on A, pinky on E. When a melody needs more than five notes, the score moves the hand to a new position and the printed finger numbers show where.
• Single-note left hand. The bass plays one note at a time, from slow drones (Dies Irae) to the waltzing oom-pah-pah of Danse Macabre. The only chord in the collection is the final A minor chord of the Mountain King.
• Minor keys with few accidentals. Ten pieces use no black-key note or just one, usually G-sharp; Lacrimosa, the most chromatic, uses five. You get the full spooky sound of A minor and D minor without reading thickets of sharps.
• The pieces talk to each other. Learn the Dies Irae as piece 1, then find it hiding inside Danse Macabre as piece 12 – the same medieval chant Saint-Saens smuggled into his skeleton waltz in 1874.

Set Up Before You Play

Thirty minutes of Toccata practice is a lot more fun when your forearms are level with the keys. Two minutes with our piano bench height calculator gives you the exact seat height for your body – and if your bench cannot reach it, our adjustable bench with back support covers the whole family, from the smallest goblin to the tallest ghost.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this Halloween sheet music really free?

Yes. Level 1 downloads directly with no email. Levels 2 and 3 are also free – we send the PDFs by email so we can follow up with practice tips. Every piece is in the public domain, so you can print, copy and perform them freely.

What level of pianist is this for?

True beginners. Level 1 needs only five fingers and single bass notes. Level 3 is “advanced beginner”: still a single-note left hand (apart from the Mountain King’s final chord), but with accidentals, position shifts and faster tempos. If you can play from our main beginner library, you can play all fifteen.

Is the Toccata in D minor really playable by a beginner?

Our arrangement is. You play the three famous organ cries – high, middle and low – with fermatas between them, one hand at a time, then a simple cadence hands together. It sounds enormous and reads easy: that is the whole trick.

Why is there no Michael Myers theme or This Is Halloween?

Those are under copyright, so no honest free PDF can include them. The good news: the scariest music ever written – the Dies Irae, the Toccata, Night on Bald Mountain – is centuries old and completely free. Film composers borrow from these very pieces.

Looking for year-round material? The full 25-piece beginner library is free too, level by level.

Learn each piece note by note

• Dies Irae: sheet, video and fingering
• The Hearse Song: sheet, video and fingering
• Ah, Poor Bird: sheet, video and fingering
• Chopin's Funeral March: sheet, video and fingering
• Aase's Death: sheet, video and fingering
• Gnossienne No. 1: sheet, video and fingering
• Greensleeves: sheet, video and fingering
• Moonlight Sonata: sheet, video and fingering
• Swan Lake Theme: sheet, video and fingering
• Wayfaring Stranger: sheet, video and fingering
• In the Hall of the Mountain King: sheet, video and fingering
• Danse Macabre: sheet, video and fingering
• Toccata in D Minor: sheet, video and fingering
• Night on Bald Mountain: sheet, video and fingering
• Lacrimosa: sheet, video and fingering