Noctave
The piece
This eighteenth-century tune is a round: several voices take up the same melody in turn, two bars apart, and everything fits together. Gustav Mahler turned it into a funeral march in a minor key in the third movement of his First Symphony. Here the tune drops into the left hand, and the right hand makes do with one whole note per bar.
Each phrase is sung twice, which gives the left hand time to settle. "Frère Jacques" circles around C–D–E; "Dormez-vous" climbs to G, held for two beats. Then comes the only passage in eighths, G–A–G–F, on "Sonnez les matines": keep your fingers close to the keys and don't cut short the quarter-note E and C that follow. For "Ding, dang, dong", the hand leaves its position, drops to the low G and comes back up to C; prepare that move of a fourth by watching the bass staff rather than the keyboard. Meanwhile the right hand holds E, G or C for the whole bar.