Intermediate
What Child Is This?
2:10
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Song library
Browse piano sheets by Anonymous on Zen Virtual Piano. Anonymous is a collective attribution for traditional and unattributed pieces. The Seikilos epitaph is an Ancient Greek inscription that preserves the oldest surviving complete musical composition, including musical notation, commonly dated between the 1st and 2nd century AD and found engraved on a pillar. A tune engraved on a pillar and still the oldest surviving complete composition shows how one inscription can carry a musical idea across many centuries. “Soon May the Wellerman Come,” also known as “Wellerman,” is a folk song in ballad style first published in New Zealand in the 1970s. The “wellermen” were supply ships owned by the Weller brothers, three merchant traders in the 1800s. Neil Colquhoun documented the song in 1966 from a man then in his 80s who said he had been taught it by his uncle, and in 1973 it was included in Colquhoun’s book of New Zealand folk songs. A song documented from one man’s account of what his uncle had taught him, suggests how a tradition can outlast any record of its author. “Greensleeves” is a traditional English folk song. A broadside ballad called “A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves” was registered by Richard Jones at the London Stationers’ Company in September 1580, and the tune is found in several sources from the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Christmas and New Year texts were associated with the tune from as early as 1686, and by the 19th century almost every printed collection of Christmas carols included some version of words and music together. Different texts attached to the same tune hint at how a melody can be more durable than the words it is given. Its melody is compatible with the chords in more than one of the ground bass chord progressions well known at the time of its composition, including the romanesca, the passamezzo antico and the Andalusian progression. A tune that fits several well-known chord patterns of its day may owe some of its staying power to familiarity. “Romance,” a guitar piece, is in the style of the parlour music of the late 19th century in Spain or South America. It has a closed three-part form, the first part in the minor key, the second in the major key and the third a restatement of the first. Its earliest recording is on a cylinder from the Viuda de Aramburo label featuring the guitarists Luis and Simon Ramírez, made in Madrid sometime between 1897 and 1901. A parlour-style guitar piece captured on a cylinder sits at the border between the salon and the recording studio.
Browse piano sheets by Anonymous on Zen Virtual Piano.
Anonymous is a collective attribution for traditional and unattributed pieces. The Seikilos epitaph is an Ancient Greek inscription that preserves the oldest surviving complete musical composition, including musical notation, commonly dated between the 1st and 2nd century AD and found engraved on a pillar. A tune engraved on a pillar and still the oldest surviving complete composition shows how one inscription can carry a musical idea across many centuries.
“Soon May the Wellerman Come,” also known as “Wellerman,” is a folk song in ballad style first published in New Zealand in the 1970s. The “wellermen” were supply ships owned by the Weller brothers, three merchant traders in the 1800s. Neil Colquhoun documented the song in 1966 from a man then in his 80s who said he had been taught it by his uncle, and in 1973 it was included in Colquhoun’s book of New Zealand folk songs. A song documented from one man’s account of what his uncle had taught him, suggests how a tradition can outlast any record of its author.
“Greensleeves” is a traditional English folk song. A broadside ballad called “A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves” was registered by Richard Jones at the London Stationers’ Company in September 1580, and the tune is found in several sources from the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Christmas and New Year texts were associated with the tune from as early as 1686, and by the 19th century almost every printed collection of Christmas carols included some version of words and music together. Different texts attached to the same tune hint at how a melody can be more durable than the words it is given. Its melody is compatible with the chords in more than one of the ground bass chord progressions well known at the time of its composition, including the romanesca, the passamezzo antico and the Andalusian progression. A tune that fits several well-known chord patterns of its day may owe some of its staying power to familiarity.
“Romance,” a guitar piece, is in the style of the parlour music of the late 19th century in Spain or South America. It has a closed three-part form, the first part in the minor key, the second in the major key and the third a restatement of the first. Its earliest recording is on a cylinder from the Viuda de Aramburo label featuring the guitarists Luis and Simon Ramírez, made in Madrid sometime between 1897 and 1901. A parlour-style guitar piece captured on a cylinder sits at the border between the salon and the recording studio.
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An Ancient Greek inscription that preserves the oldest surviving complete musical composition, including musical notation, commonly dated between the 1st and 2nd century AD.
Neil Colquhoun documented it in 1966 from a man in his 80s who said his uncle had taught it to him, and it was first published in New Zealand in the 1970s.
A broadside ballad titled “A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves” was registered by Richard Jones at the London Stationers’ Company in September 1580.