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Piano sheet music for kids · National song · Level 3: Notes below middle C
God Save the King
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 3/4, 14 bars. Press Play to hear it on a real piano, slow it down, or hear one hand at a time; click any note to start from there; print it for the music stand.
About this arrangement
The royal anthem of Australia and the national anthem of the United Kingdom, in a slow 3/4. It starts with the thumb on the B below middle C, so the hand covers B to F for the first six bars. For “Send him vic-to-ri-ous” it moves up one key, thumb on middle C, and the little finger stretches up to A near the end. The stately long-short rhythm, a dotted crotchet and a quaver (eighth note), comes in bars 2, 4, 8, 10 and 12, and “long to reign” and “God save” use pairs of quavers. The left hand plays a bass note and two chords in each bar.
Practice tip: Play it slowly and steadily, as if for an assembly. Learn the first six bars with the thumb on B, then the last eight with the thumb on middle C, and practise the move between them.
The words
God save our gracious King, long live our noble King, God save the King! Send him victorious, happy and glorious, long to reign over us, God save the King!
A short history
Nobody knows who wrote God Save the King. The first printing that resembles it appeared in 1744 in a collection called Thesaurus Musicus, headed simply “For two voices”. In September 1745, after the Jacobite army of Charles Edward Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie, beat the government forces at Prestonpans in Scotland, it was sung at the London theatres in Drury Lane and Covent Garden in support of King George II, and it soon spread everywhere. By the 1790s it had become Britain’s national anthem.
It was Australia’s national anthem for most of the 20th century. Since 1984 it has been Australia’s royal anthem, played when the monarch or a member of the royal family is present, and since 2022 it has been sung as “God Save the King” again.
The same tune is sung in the United States as “My Country, ’Tis of Thee”, and it is the national anthem of Liechtenstein.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Traditional (English, printed 1744)
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 3/4
- Length
- 14 bars
- Tempo
- Steadily, crotchet = 84
- Difficulty
- Level 3: Notes below middle C (piece 47 of 201)
- Type
- National song
- Hands
- Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left
- Copyright
- Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use
Questions and answers
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