This peaceful playlist will help settle your little ones to sleep. Play it during their bedtime routine or after you lay them down to sleep. It features a wide variety of music, from piano solos, to instrumental trios, to string orchestras with music composed from 1730 to 1978.
Franz Schubert – Du bist die Ruh
Featuring a soprano voice and piano, this piece has major lullaby vibes.
Francis Poulenc – Trio for Oboe, Bassoon, and Piano: 2nd movement
This beautiful piece features the oboe and bassoon, two double reed and instruments that are a part of the woodwind family.
Delibes – Lakme: Flower Duet
Soprano and alto voices float weightlessly over a small orchestra in this classic vocal piece from Delibe’s opera “Lakmé.”
Samuel Barber – Adagio
This piece is a classic calming piece of orchestra music. It is slow and solemn, with a melody that is both soaring and understated.
Johan Sebastian Bach – Air “On the G string”
Bach’s Air “On the G String” is one of the most well-known pieces of orchestra music, and for good reason. It’s steady beat and flowing melody make it the perfect combination of interesting and calming.
Claude Debussy – Suite Bergamesque: Clair de Lune
This famous piano piece is written all about the light of the moon. It features silvery open chords and uses a wide range of notes, from the lowest part of the piano all the way to the top.
Johannes Brahms – Wiegenlied
Did you know the famous lullaby that has lulls millions of children to sleep each night was written by orchestral composer Johanned Brahms in 1868? It feels like a piece of music that has always been around, but only a few generations have known it as a goodnight song.
Ludwig van Beethoven – Symphony No.7 in A: 2nd Movement
Beethoven’s 7th Symphony is an amazing and interesting piece of music. You’ll hear the orchestra build slowly upon itself in this piece, featuring many different voices and melodies all around the orchestra.
Jules Massenet – Meditation from Thais
Arvo Pärt -Spiegel im Spiegel
The only truly contemporary piece of this list, Spiegel im Spiegel was composed in 1978. It’s title translates to “mirror in the mirror,” which you can hear as you listen to the piano phrase that repeats throughout the whole piece, like an image infinitely repeating when two mirrors are placed facing each other.
Robert Schumann- Kinderszenen: Träumerei
Traumerei means dreaming and is from Schuman’s work titled “Scenes from Childhood.” This piece features only the piano.
Edward Elgar – Enigma Variations: Nimrod
Elgar wrote this piece of music, featuring the string orchestra, about his best friend. He says the piece of music isn’t meant to describe his friend, but instead “a story of something that happened” involving the two of them.
Gustav Mahler- Symphony no. 5: Movement 4, Adagietto
This is the 3rd movement from Mahler’s Symphony no 5. It is one of his most famous composition and is the most frequently performed of any of his works. It is said to be a love song for his wife.
Sweet dreams!