John Howard Payne's "Home, Sweet Home" has always been one of the best-loved parlor songs. It can be sung immaterial of the time period, for everyone at one point longs for 'home' whatever it is conceived to be.
- Song: Home, Sweet Home
- Songwriter: John Howard Payne (1791-1852)
- Music: Sir Henry Bishop
- Song Refrain: "Home, home, sweet home. There's no place like home; there's no place like home."
Middle-class Victorians referred to this parlor song as a "sacred text" to express a longing for peace when so much social upheavals, industrial and economic growth were going on at that time.
Beginnings of "Home, Sweet Home"
The melody of this lovely song "Home, Sweet Home" first appeared in 1821, included in an album of national airs compiled by Henry Bishop, composer and director of music at London's Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. Bishop wanted to include a tune from Sicily, but was not able to find a suitable one, so he wrote an original tune and dubbed it Sicilian. Bishop added the words by the American lyricist John Howard Payne two years later. From it came "Home, Sweet Home" into an opera,Clari, or The Maid of Milan. The opera was first performed at Covent Garden on the 8th of May, 1823. "Home, Sweet Home" was included at the end of act one, sung by soprano Maria Tree. The song was overnight sensation achieving enormous fame, and so was the popularity of the soprano.
International Recogntion
The rest is history. "Home, Sweet Home" was embraced internationally, in repertoires as well as in private rooms soireés. The great operatic soprano Adelina Patti used it as an audition piece. She also performed it at the opening of the Chicago Auditorium in the presence of the President of the United States, James Buchanan in 1859. Another top singer that time, Jenny Lind, popularly dubbed the Swedish Nightingale, sang it in all her concerts starting from 1850 onwards.
Arguably, the song's most famous performer was the distinguished Australian opera soprano Dame Nellie Melba. Audiences around the world would chant "How, Sweet Home" to bring her back to the platform. Clari had been the first opera to be staged in Australia in 1834, when most of the population were still first-generation immigrants, and the song naturally became part of Australia's heritage, then a young colony.
The Songwriter, the Composer, and their "Home, Sweet Home"
It is ironical that neither the composer, Bishop, nor the songwriter, Payne, experienced the simple pleasures of home life. Sir Henry Bishop, although acquired respectability as the first musician knighted, has been described by Michael Turner in his pioneering study, the Parlour songbook, as "a noted reprobate, home wrecker and spendthrift." His wife ran off with the French harpist Nicholas Bochsa, making their home in Sydney, Australia. John Howard Payne, who seemed to be always short of money, sold the rights of Clari for 250 pounds and spent most of his life in homeless drifts, haunted by the strains of "Home, Sweet Home" played in all corners of the world.
First stanza of "Home, Sweet Home"
'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;
A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there,
Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere.
Music Link
Mutopia Project (from there, click 'Midi file')
Source:
The Illustrated Victorian Songbook, Compiled and Presented, Authors: Aline Waites and Robin Hunter, Musical Director David Wykes, Sheldrake Press Ltd. (1984)
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