A light salon waltz composed by Octave Lamart that captures the graceful spirit of late 19th-century light piano music. It is typical of the genre, focusing on accessible melodic content and standard rhythmic accompaniment.
Practice establishing a stable, dance-like waltz rhythm while allowing for expressive rubato in the melody.
Comparable difficulty and character — good candidates for what to learn next.
Bêtises de Cambrai is rated Henle level 4 of 9 — intermediate repertoire, roughly ABRSM grades 5–6. In the RCM system it corresponds to about level 5.
You should be comfortable at Henle level 4 — meaning you can already play level 3–4 pieces cleanly. Learning it one level early is possible as a stretch piece, but more than that usually leads to months of frustration.
A typical performance of Bêtises de Cambrai lasts about 3 minutes.
Bêtises de Cambrai is available as free public-domain sheet music on IMSLP — the score is linked directly from this page.
Pieces at a comparable difficulty and character include Waltz No. 2 by Dmitri Shostakovich, Waltz in C-sharp minor, No. 2 by Frédéric Chopin, Belle of the Ball by Leroy Anderson — see the full similar-pieces list on this page.