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Piano sheet music for kids · Folk song · Level 6: Moving on
Greensleeves
Free beginner piano sheet music: A minor, 6/8, 16 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
The Tudor love song, in A minor, which is why it sounds wistful rather than bright. There is no key signature, but G sharp and F sharp keep turning up, so read every note before you play it. It is in 6/8 with a one-quaver (eighth-note) pickup on “A-”, and the long-short pairs, a dotted quaver and a semiquaver, give it its gentle swing. The right hand starts on the A above middle C and travels from the E below it up to the high G of “Green-sleeves”. The left hand plays a bass note and a chord on each big beat, moving through A minor, G, F, E and C.
Practice tip: Count two big beats in a bar, “one and a, two and a”. Circle every G sharp and F sharp in pencil before you start: they are what make the tune sound old.
The words
Alas, my love you do me wrong to cast me off discourteously. And I have loved you so long, delighting in your company. Greensleeves was all my joy Greensleeves was my delight, Greensleeves was my heart of gold, and who but my lady Greensleeves.
A short history
A ballad called “A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves” was registered with the Stationers’ Company in London in September 1580, and six more songs about Lady Greensleeves followed within a year. The words used here, beginning “Alas, my love, you do me wrong”, come from a version printed in A Handful of Pleasant Delights in 1584.
The tune was famous at once. Shakespeare mentions it twice in The Merry Wives of Windsor, first printed in 1602, once by Mistress Ford and once by Falstaff. A popular story says Henry VIII wrote it, but he cannot have: the song is built in an Italian style that only reached England after his death in 1547.
The melody has carried many other words since, including the Christmas carol “What Child Is This?”, written by William Chatterton Dix in 1865.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Traditional (English, by 1580)
- Key
- A minor
- Time signature
- 6/8
- Length
- 16 bars and a pickup
- Tempo
- Gently, dotted crotchet = 52
- Difficulty
- Level 6: Moving on (piece 201 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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