Wednesday 16 April 2008

Home ! Sweet Home !

Home! Sweet Home!

This article is about the popular 19th century song. For other meanings, see Home Sweet Home Cover of the sheet music for a 1914 publication of "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 Fantalsie 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.

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