Home! Sweet Home!

Sheet music version.

"Home! Sweet Home!" (also known as "Home, Sweet Home") is a song that has remained
well known for over 150 years. Adapted from American actor and dramatist John Howard
Payne's 1823 opera Clari, or the Maid of Milan, the song's melody was composed by
Englishman Sir Henry Bishop with lyrics by Payne. The words are as follows:
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 elsewhere.
Home! Home!
Sweet, sweet home!
There's no place like home
There's no place like home!
As soon as 1827 this song was quoted by Swedish composer Franz Berwald in his
Konzertstck for Bassoon and Orchestra (middle section, marked Andante). Gaetano
Donizetti used the theme in his Opera Anna Bolena (1830) Act 2, Scene 3 as part of Annas
Mad Scene to underscore her longing for her childhood home. It is also used with Sir Henry
Wood's Fantasia on British Sea Songs and in Alexandre Guilmant's Fantasy for organ Op.
43, the Fantaisie sur deux mlodies anglaises, both of which also use "Rule, Britannia!". In
1857 composer/pianist Sigismond Thalberg wrote a series of variations for piano (op. 72) on
the theme of Home! Sweet Home!.

In 1909, it was featured[citation needed] in the silent film The House of Cards, an Edison Studios film.
[1]
In the particular scene, a frontier bar was hurriedly closed due to a fracas. A card reading
"Play Home Sweet Home" was displayed, upon which an on-screen fiddler promptly supplied
a pantomime of the song. This may imply a popular association of this song with the closing
hour of drinking establishments.[citation needed]
The song was reputedly banned from being played in Union Army camps during the
American Civil War for being too redolent of hearth and home and so likely to incite
desertion.[2]
The song is famous in Japan as "Hany no Yado" ("" ) ("My Humble Cottage"). It
has been used in such movies as The Burmese Harp[3] and Grave of the Fireflies. It is also
used at Senri-Ch Station on the Kita-Osaka Kyk Railway.
?

Henry Bishop (composer)

Sir Henry Rowley Bishop, by Isaac Pocock (died 1835)

Sir Henry Rowley Bishop (18 November 1786 30 April
1855) was an English composer. He is most famous for the
songs "Home! Sweet Home!" and "Lo! Here the Gentle
Lark." He was the composer or arranger of some 120
dramatic works, including 80 operas, light operas, cantatas,
and ballets. Knighted in 1842, he was the first musician to
be so honoured. Bishop worked for all the major theatres of
London in his era including the Royal Opera House at
Covent Garden, the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Vauxhall
Gardens and the Haymarket Theatre, and was Professor of
Music at the universities of Edinburgh and Oxford. His
second wife was the noted soprano Anna Bishop, who
scandalised British society by leaving him and conducting an open liaison with the harpist
Nicolas-Charles Bochsa until the latter's death in Sydney.

Biography[edit]
Bishop was born in London, where his father was a watchmaker and haberdasher. At the age
of 13, Bishop left full-time education and worked as a music-publisher with his cousin. After
training as a jockey at Newmarket, he took some lessons in harmony from Francisco Bianchi
in London. In 1804 he wrote the music to a piece called "Angelina", which was performed at
Margate.
Bishop's "operas" were written in a style and format that satisfied the audiences of his day.
They have more in common with the earlier, native English ballad opera genre, or with
modern musicals, than the classical opera of continental Europe with full recitatives. His first
opera, The Circassian's Bride (1809), had one performance at Drury Lane before the theatre
burned down and the score was lost.
Between 1816 and 1828, Bishop composed the music for a series of Shakespearean operas
staged by Frederic Reynolds. But these, and the numerous works, operas, burlettas, cantatas,
incidental music etc. which he wrote are mostly forgotten. Even his limited partnering with
various composers including Joseph Edwards Carpenter and Stephen Glover are overlooked.
1816 also saw the composition of a string quartet in C minor.[1]
His most successful operas were The Virgin of the Sun (1812), The Miller and his Men
(1813), Guy Mannering (1816), and Clari, or the Maid of Milan (1823). Clari, with a libretto
by the American John Howard Payne, included the song Home! Sweet Home!, which became
enormously popular. In 1852 Bishop 'relaunched' the song as a parlour ballad. It was popular
in the United States throughout the American Civil War and after. Also of note is Bishop's
1819 musical comedy adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, which
included the popular coloratura soprano aria "Lo! Here the Gentle Lark."[2]

In 1825 Bishop was induced by Robert Elliston to transfer his services from Covent Garden
to the rival house in Drury Lane, for which he wrote the opera Aladdin, based on the story
from 1001 Nights. It was intended to compete with Weber's Oberon, commissioned by the
other house. Aladdin failed, and Bishop's career as an operatic composer came to an end.
He did, however, rework operas by other composers. An 1827 Covent Garden playbill
records a performance of the Marriage of Figaro with "The Overture and Music selected
chiefly from Mozarts operas the new music by Mr Bishop". It included an aria called
Follow, follow oer the mountain, sung by Miss Paton.
Bishop was one of the original directors of the Philharmonic Society when it was founded in
1813. He conducted at Covent Garden and at the London Philharmonic concerts. In 1841 he
was appointed Reid Professor of Music in the University of Edinburgh, but resigned the
office in 1843. In 1848 he became Professor of Music at the University of Oxford,
succeeding William Crotch. His last work was the commissioned music for the ode at the
installation of Lord Derby as chancellor of the university in 1853.
According to William Denslow, Bishop was a free-mason. Bishop was knighted in 1842, the
first musician to be so honoured.
Bishop's later years were clouded by scandal. He had married his second wife, the singer Ann
Rivire, in 1831. She was twenty-three years younger than he and they had three children.[3]
In 1839, Anna Bishop (as she was now known) abandoned her husband and three children to
run off with her lover and accompanist, the harpist and composer Nicolas-Charles Bochsa.
They left England to give concert tours abroad until Bochsa died in Sydney, Australia in
1856.[3] Anna Bishop sang in every continent and was the most widely travelled opera singer
of the 19th century.
Sir Henry Bishop died in poverty in London, although he had a substantial income during his
lifetime. He is buried in East Finchley Cemetery in north London

Listen to the Mocking Bird

"Listen to the Mocking Bird" (1855) is an American popular song of the mid-19th century.
Its lyrics were composed by Septimus Winner under the pseudonym "Alice Hawthorne", and
its music was by Richard Milburn.
It relates the story of a singer dreaming of his sweetheart, now dead and buried, and a
mockingbird, whose song the couple once enjoyed, now singing over her grave. Yet the
melody is moderately lively.
"Listen to the Mocking Bird" was one of the most popular ballads of the era and sold more
than twenty million copies of sheet music.[1] It was popular during the American Civil War
and was used as marching music. Abraham Lincoln was especially fond of it, saying, "It is as
sincere as the laughter of a little girl at play."[2]

Adaptations[edit]
The song's melody was reprised by Louis Prima & Keely Smith for their 1956 version of the
song, with new lyrics, entitled "Nothing's Too Good For My Baby."[3]
Its verse was the instrumental introduction to a number of the early short films by The Three
Stooges, rendered in a comical manner with birds chirping in the background. The first
Stooges short to employ this theme was 1935's Pardon My Scotch; in later shorts the song
was replaced with "Three Blind Mice."
"Listen to the Mocking Bird" was parodied in the television series, The Flintstones, as a
swinging jazz tune called "Listen to the Rocking Bird".
In the movie The Alamo (2004), Davy Crockett plays "Listen to the Mocking Bird" on his
fiddle to a crowd, although the song was not composed until 1855, 19 years after the Battle of
the Alamo where Crockett died.
"Listen to the Mockingbird" was played on the piano by Jason Walton (Jon Walmsley) at the
request of Miss Mamie and Miss Emily Baldwin (Helen Kleeb and Mary Jackson) on The
Waltons TV series, Season 4, Episode 19 "The Burnout" (1976). Listen to the MockingbirdJason and the Baldwin Sisters

Septimus Winner

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Alice Hawthorne)

Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about Septimus Winner, who wrote some of his songs under the name of Alice
Hawthorne. For Alice Hawthorne who was the victim of U.S. domestic terrorism, see
Centennial Olympic Park bombing.

Septimus Winner (11 May 1827 - 22 November 1902) was an American songwriter of the
19th century. He used his own name, and also the pseudonyms Alice Hawthorne, Percy
Guyer, Mark Mason, Apsley Street, and Paul Stenton. He was also a teacher, performer,
and music publisher.

Contents
[hide]

1 Biography

2 Songs
o 2.1 List

3 Notes

4 Sources

5 External links

Biography[edit]

Winner was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the seventh child to Joseph E. Winner (an
instrument maker specializing in violins) and wife Mary Ann. Mary Ann Winner was a
relative of Nathaniel Hawthorne, hence Septimus' use of the Hawthorne name as part of his
pseudonym Alice Hawthorne.
Winner attended Philadelphia Central High School. Although largely self-taught in the area of
music, he did take lessons from Leopold Meignen around 1853, but by that time he was
already an established instrumental teacher, and performed locally with various ensembles.
From around 1845 to 1854, Septimus Winner partnered with his brother Joseph Eastburn
Winner (1837 - 1918) as music publishers. Septimus continued in the business with various
partners and names until 1902.
Winner was especially popular for his ballads published under the pseudonym of Alice
Hawthorne, which became known generically as "Hawthorne's Ballads". His brother was also
a composer, publishing under the alias Eastburn. Septimus Winner was inducted into the
Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.[1]
In addition to composing popular songs, Winner also produced more than 200 instruction
method books for more than twenty-three instruments. He wrote more than 1,500 easy
arrangements for various instruments and almost 2,000 arrangements for violin and piano.

Songs[edit]
In 1855, Winner published the song "Listen to the Mockingbird" under the Alice Hawthorne
name. He had arranged and added words to a tune by local singer/guitarist Richard Milburn,
an employee, whom he credited. Later he sold the rights, reputedly for five dollars, and
subsequent publications omitted Milburn's name from the credits. The song was indeed a
winner, selling about 15 million copies in the United States alone.
Another of his successes, and still familiar, is "Der Deitcher's Dog", or "Oh Where, oh Where
Ish Mine Little Dog Gone", a text that Winner set to the German folk tune "In Lauterbach
hab' ich mein' Strumpf verlor'n" in 1864, which recorded massive sales during Winner's
lifetime.
The first verse of "Der Deitcher's Dog" is particularly noteworthy as its first verse has
become a popular nursery rhyme:
Oh where, oh where has my little dog gone?
Oh where, oh where can he be?
With his ears cut short, and his tail cut long,
Oh where, oh where is he?
Modern versions occasionally change "cut" to "so".
The original song is written in German dialect, and subsequent verses praise lager but lament
the fact that "mit no money" it is not possible to drink, and praise sausages and thence to
speculate on the fate of the missing dog:

Dey makes un mit dog und dey makes em mit horse,

I guess dey makes em mit he
Another of Winner's best-remembered songs, "Ten Little Indians", was originally published in
1864. This was adapted, possibly by Frank J. Green in 1868 as "Ten Little Niggers" and
became a standard of the blackface minstrel shows.[2] It was sung by Christy's Minstrels and
became widely known in Europe, where it was used by Agatha Christie in her novel And
Then There Were None, about ten killings on a remote island.[3] In 2005, film historian
Richard Finegan identified Winner as the composer of the Three Stooges song "Swinging the
Alphabet". Winner had originally published it in 1875 as "The Spelling Bee".[4][5]
In 1862, Winner was arrested for treason because he wrote and published a song entitled
"Give Us Back Our Old Commander: Little Mac, the People's Pride". It concerned General
George B. McClellan, whom President Abraham Lincoln had just fired from the command of
the Army of the Potomac. McClellan was a popular man, and his supporters bought more
than 80,000 copies of the song among them in its first two days of publication. Winner was in
deep disgrace, and was only released from arrest after promising to destroy all of the
remaining copies. The song reappeared in 1864 when McClellan was a presidential candidate.
In 1880 the words were rewritten as a campaign ditty on behalf of Ulysses S. Grant.[1]

Waltz (music)
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A section from Johann Strauss' Waltz from Die Fledermaus

A waltz (German: Walzer; French: Valse, Italian: Valzer), probably deriving from German
Lndler, is dance music in triple meter, and if written, often written in time signature 3/4. A
waltz typically sounds one chord per measure, and the accompaniment style particularly
associated with the waltz is (as seen in the example to the right) to play the root of the chord
on the first beat, the upper notes on the second and third beats.

Contents
[hide]

1 History

2 Jazz waltzes

3 Examples
o 3.1 Classical waltzes
o 3.2 Popular song waltzes
o 3.3 Contemporary waltzes

4 See also

5 References

6 Further reading

History[edit]

The name "waltz" comes from the German verb walzen, in turn taken from the Latin verb
volvere, which describes the turning or rotating movement characteristic of the dance.
Although French writers have attempted to connect the waltz to the 16th century volta, firm
evidence connecting this Italian form to the earliest occurrence in the mid-18th century of
walzen to describe dancing is lacking (Lamb 2001).
Classical composers traditionally supplied music for dancing when required, and Franz
Schubert's waltzes (including the Valses Sentimentales and Valses Nobles) were written for
household dancing, without any pretense at being art music. However, Frdric Chopin's
surviving 18 waltzes (five he wrote as a child), along with his mazurkas and polonaises, were
clearly not intended for dance. They marked the adoption of the waltz and other dance forms
as serious composition genres. Other notable contributions to the waltz genre in classical
music include 16 by Johannes Brahms (originally for piano duet), and Maurice Ravel's Valses
nobles et sentimentales for piano and La valse for orchestra (Lamb 2001).
The long period of the waltz's popularity was brought to an end by the First World War,
which destroyed the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the Viennese culture which had
nurtured it for so long. European light music shifted from Vienna to Berlin, and compositions
by composers such as Gustav Mahler, Igor Stravinsky, and William Walton treated the dance
in a nostalgic or grotesque manner as a thing of the past. Waltzes nevertheless continued to be
written by composers of light music, such as Eric Coates, Robert Stolz, Ivor Novello, Richard
Rodgers, Cole Porter, Oscar Straus, and Stephen Sondheim. The predominant ballroom form
in the 20th century has become the slow waltz, which rose to popularity around 1910 and was
derived from the valse Boston of the 1870s. Examples derived from popular songs include
"Ramona" (1927), "Parlami damore, Mari" (1933), and "The Last Waltz" (1970) (Lamb
2001).

Jazz waltzes[edit]
In a jazz context, "waltz" signifies any piece of music in 3/4 time, whether intended for
dancing or not (Anon 2002). Although there are early examples such as the "Missouri Waltz"
by Dan and Harveys Jazz Band (1918) and the "Jug Band Waltz" or the "Mississippi Waltz"
by the Memphis Jug Band (1928), they are exceptional, as almost all jazz before 1955 was in
duple meter. It was only after the bop waltz appeared in the early 1950s (e.g., Thelonious
Monks recording of Carolina Moon in 1952 and Sonny Rollinss Valse Hot in 1956) that
triple meter became at all common in jazz (Kernfeld 2002).