the score of waltzing matilda

The song you are now hearing is Waltzing Matilda, called by some the second or unofficial national anthem of Australia. The version you're hearing is performed by Slim Dusty, a singer of Australian songs and himself a tradition in Australia. In this rendition, Slim is accompanied by his Bushlanders.

Most people credit Banjo Peterson with composing Waltzing Matilda, which has proved to be a very popular song and a great success all over the world. Although there is little doubt that Peterson write the original lyrics, as we shall see, the identity of the originator of the melody is obscure. As with other successful music, it has inspired many variations, most of which are based on Banjo Peterson's lyrics; other versions of the song based on the melody have alternative lyrics with very different objectives and stories to tell.

Below is a copy of the composer's entire original score, just as he set it down with pencil and paper; it's an almost-life-sized reproduction designed to make it legible and easy to read. It contains all four of the song's verses and its refrain. Click the score at any time to hear the song again.

At the left, Christina Macpherson, credited with hearing the melody to Waltzing Matilda and recognizing its full potential. At the right, Andrew Barton Paterson, known as Banjo Paterson, a popular nationalist Australian poet of the time and the person who wrote the lyrics.

history

Here's the story of how the song was born. Read it as you listen.

Christina Macpherson was the daughter of an Australian squatter, a relationship that put her in an excellent position to appreciate the subject matter and the sentiments expressed by the lyrics of the song as we know today. However, at the time she first heard it, the lyrics we know today did not exist and the song was nothing like the song that eventuated.

Details of how the song came to be are murky. One theory is that Waltzing Matilda started life as a Scots folk tune which was transformed into a popular Scots song called Thou Bonnie Wood of Craigielee. Barr composed the music in 1818 and Tannahill wrote the words in 1805; the tune was transcribed for brass band by Thomas Bulch in 1893.

At this point, Waltzing Matilda had yet to be born.

When Christina heard Thou Bonnie Wood of Craigielee at a public event she was instantly enthralled by its melody. Not a professional musician herself, she did her best to commit the tune to memory and to transcribe it so as to preserve it for conversion into something else.

In one version of the story, Christina's brother Bob, an acquaintance of Peterson, is thought to have told him about an Australian sheep sheerer who, being pursued by authorities after participating in a violent 1894 Queensland sheep herder's strike, shot himself at an outback waterhole rather than allow himself to be captured. This event inspired Paterson to write Waltzing Matilda and use it as a socialist anthem in 1895, one year after the strike. In another version of the story, Paterson penned the song to please Ms. Macpherson, with whom he was enamored.

• For more about Waltzing Matilda's possible origins and history, visit the Waltzing Matilda page at the Wikipedia web site: click here.

the score—words & music together

To gain insight into what a score is for and what it is like, The Muse Of Music suggests that you start by playing the song again. To do this, click the picture of Banjo's score, below. This time, follow along by reading the score as the song plays. Read Banjo's lyrics as Slim and his Bushlanders sing.

The Muse realizes that Banjo's handwriting is not the best, and that the image of his score is blurred. So, The Muse has provided a printed an extra-large copy of Banjo's lyrics to help you decipher what you read in case you run into trouble (see below, under the score). Although Banjo's original version and Slim's version are similar, don't expect Slim's version to exactly match the original one. Slight variations among Waltzing Matilda renditions are common.

In popular or classical music, variations are common. Variations are permitted—even relished—as a consequence of musical creativity and artistic freedom; that's one of the wonderful aspects of art.

about banjo's score

Notice that Banjo has used paper on which staves have been preprinted. In his own hand, he has added or omitted these items:

• Song title.
• The key signature, which directly follows the clef. The three flat symbols signify that score is in the key of E-flat Major.
• Notes that specify what notes to play on a musical instrument and the order in which to play them.
• A clef symbol that indicates the range of the notes on the stave. It could be a bass clef, but here Banjo is indicating a treble clef.
• Vertical bars that indicate the start and end of measures.
• A time signature, which specifies how many beats are in a measure and which kind of note receives one beat. With these two factors in mind, a reader can deduce how long to hold each note and which note or notes to emphasize.
  • The time signature is missing from this score. When present, a reader will find it at the start of a stave directly following the key signature.
  • When a time signature is missing, as it is here, the time signature is assumed it to be 4/4 time. This music is to be played in 4/4 time.
• Lyrics that match up with notes so that a reader knows what words go with what sounds.
• Four verses. The first verse begins the piece and the last verse ends it.
• Verse titles.  Each of the verses other than the first verse begins with a title so a reader can tell where it begins.
• A refrain. The first verse contains the refrain, as explained below.
• Chorus notations. Each of the last three verses ends with the notation, Chorus: You'll come, etc.

Banjo did not put a marker on the page to show readers where the refrain begins because he expects a reader to figure that out for himself. Here's how:

• A chorus is the part of a song that's repeated, usually after each verse; it's another word for a refrain.
• Banjo added a notation that reads Chorus: You'll come, etc. at the end of each of the last three verses.
• Chorus: You'll come, etc. is Banjo's direction to readers and musicians telling them to finish a verse by singing the refrain.
• Where is the refrain located in the score? The song beings with the first verse. Since a refrain usually follows every verse, it's a safe bet that the refrain is embedded in the first verse.
• A reader can tell where the refrain begins by looking in the first verse for the lyric, You'll come.
• Look for the words You'll come in the first verse and you'll find them in the middle of the third stave. The chorus runs from there to the end of the first verse.

Why ask a reader to look for a refrain instead of marking it on a score? This method for indicting a refrain is an economical shorthand that saves composers the trouble of writing a refrain over and over after every verse. It saves paper, too, and cleans up the score so that it's less messy.