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Piano sheet music for kids · Nursery rhyme · Level 5: A wider range
If All the World Were Paper
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 6/8, 8 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
A nonsense rhyme set to a dance tune more than 370 years old, as Walter Crane printed it in 1878. It is in 6/8 with a pickup on G, and almost every bar swings long-short, a crotchet (quarter note) then a quaver (eighth note). Bar 1 climbs to the C above middle C for “pa-per” in bar 2; then the hand drops all the way down to D, one step above middle C, and climbs a step at a time through bars 3 to 5. At the end of bar 6 it leaps up to the D above for “What should”. The left hand plays a bass note and a chord on each big beat, C, F and G.
Practice tip: Say “ALL the WORLD were” as you tap long-short, long-short, then play bar 1. Practise the end of bar 2, where the hand drops from the high C to the D just above middle C, until you can do it without looking.
The words
If all the world were paper, And all the sea were ink, And all the trees were bread and cheese, What should we do for drink?
A short history
The tune is much older than most nursery music. It appears as a country dance called If All the World Were Paper in the first edition of John Playford’s The English Dancing Master, published in London in 1651, so a song with these words was already well known by then.
The rhyme is a piece of nonsense: if the world were paper, the sea were ink and the trees were bread and cheese, there would be nothing left to drink. Longer versions go on in the same way, with the world turned to other things.
Walter Crane printed the rhyme with Playford’s tune in his picture book The Baby’s Bouquet in 1878, in C major and almost note for note the same as the 1651 dance; only the note on “What”, at the end of bar 6, differs (Playford has C).
Quick facts
- Tune
- Traditional (English; tune printed by John Playford, 1651)
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 6/8
- Length
- 8 bars and a pickup
- Tempo
- Lilting, dotted crotchet = 58
- Difficulty
- Level 5: A wider range (piece 159 of 201)
- Type
- Nursery rhyme
- 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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