Home! Sweet Home!

"Home! Sweet Home!" (also known as "Home, Sweet Home") is a song that has remained well-known for over 150 years. Adapted from the 1823 opera "Clari, Maid of Milan", the song's melody was composed by Englishman Sir Henry Bishop with lyrics by American actor and dramatist John Howard Payne. The opening lines :"Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,":"Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;"have become famous. 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 mélodies anglaises, both of which also use Rule, Britannia. More recently, in 1909, it was pictured to be played in the silent film "The House of Cards" by Thomas A. Edison. 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.

This song is famous in Japan as "Hanyu no Yado" ("A Lodging"). It has been used in such movies as "The Burmese Harp" and "Grave of the Fireflies" and is also used at Senri-Chuo Station on the Kita-Osaka Kyuko Railway.

Popular culture

Key phrases from the song have been a cultural staple for several generations.
*Needlework portraits of a house with the phrase "Home Sweet Home" have long been an icon.
*The song's melody played in the underscore as Dorothy spoke of "No Place Like Home" near the end of the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz".
*Tom Lehrer's satire of the old southern United States finished with the line, "Be it ever so decadent, there's no place like home."

References

* [http://www.seiyaku.com/hymns/en/148.html 'Home Sweet Home'; sung at western-style weddings in Japan]

External links

* [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21566/21566-h/images/home.pdf Sheet music] for Home, Sweet Home, from Project Gutenberg
* [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21566/21566-h/music/home.midi MIDI] for Home, Sweet Home, from Project Gutenberg

Derek B Scott sings "Home, Sweet Home" http://www.victorianweb.org/mt/parlorsongs/2.html