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Piano sheet music for kids · Folk song · Level 4: Up to the C above
Home, Sweet Home
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 4/4, 25 bars and a pickup. 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
Henry Bishop’s song from an 1823 London opera, which became the best-loved parlour song of the 1800s. It starts on a pickup of two quavers (eighth notes), C and D, and most lines begin with a dotted crotchet and a quaver slurred together on one syllable, the first of “pleas-ures” or “ev-er”. The tune sits in C position and reaches up to the C above for “charm”, “seek” and the “no place like home” of the refrain. The left hand plays a bass note and a chord, mostly C and G7, with F and D minor in the refrain.
Practice tip: Each slurred pair of notes is one syllable, so join the two notes smoothly and sing it as you play. Count the rests at the ends of the lines, and give the long notes in the refrain their full four beats.
The words
'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, Be it ever so humble there's no place like home. A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, Which seek thro' the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere. Home, home, sweet, sweet home, There's no place like home, There's no place like home.
A short history
“Home! Sweet Home!” comes from Clari, or the Maid of Milan, an opera first staged in London in 1823. The music is by Henry Bishop (1786–1855) and the words by the American actor and playwright John Howard Payne. Bishop had earlier printed the tune as a “Sicilian air”, but later admitted he had written it himself.
The song sold in huge numbers as sheet music, and the sopranos Adelina Patti and Nellie Melba, the great Australian singer, both used it as an encore. During the American Civil War it was reportedly banned in army camps because it made the soldiers too homesick.
Joan Sutherland sang it at her farewell performances in 1990, one of them at the Sydney Opera House. Its last line, “there’s no place like home”, is the one Dorothy repeats at the end of The Wizard of Oz.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Henry Bishop, 1823
- Words
- John Howard Payne
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 4/4
- Length
- 25 bars and a pickup
- Tempo
- Gently, crotchet = 80
- Difficulty
- Level 4: Up to the C above (piece 121 of 201)
- Type
- Folk 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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