Sad Love Songs for Voice:
Sad love songs such as Molly Bawn (or Molly Ban) draw voice students to work hard to be expressive. Young girls seem to be fascinated by the words and the mood of Molly Bawn; the song tells a story with such clear imagery: a young hunter, a swan, the white apron, the rain shower, the bush... and Molly Bawn going to her uncle's. (I am such a softy that occasionally I still am overcome by tears even as I sit at the piano, instructing a voice student.)
|
I first fell in love with this sad song when I heard Alison Kraus sing it (on her CD A Hundred Miles or More: A Collection
)
... my simple 2-chord accompaniment attempts to capture some of the feeling of the arrangement used in her recording.
Here is Molly Bawn, very much as Alison Kraus sings it:
Download free printable vocal sheet music Molly Bawn in A position
Download free printable vocal sheet music Molly Bawn in C position
Download free vocal sheet music Molly Ban in D position
Molly Bawn has a range of only an octave plus one note, yet learning the melody requires a bit of work for beginning singers. Just like a real story, each verse has words with different syllables, and the accent or emphasis will shift about. This is hard for young singers who are used to regular metric phrases. So in order to sing this song convincingly, singers must go over and over each verse to craft it, allowing the emphasis of the words to match the musical emphasis, especially on beat one. The arrangement of the notes-to-words that I have here is only a match-up of the notes to verse one.
Alison Kraus sings Molly Bawn in a fairly low key, but some of my students have not been able to give the melody power down in a low register, so for them, I use a slightly higher setting to take advantage of a their voices. The main thing when singing this song is for the audience to actually be able to follow the story, so the words need to have clarity and volume!
This is a very simple arrangement of this song; I actually tend to embellish the chords here when I accompany students, filling in missing chord tones in the right hand, softly touching higher notes and octaves, playing lots of open 5ths in accord with the feeling of this folk tune. But if you understand how to use chords, you can already do this... if you don't do it easily, then an arrangement such as is written here will probably be more welcome to you!
Another video I'm kind of taken with is this fellow who pipes and sings Molly Ban:
I hope this song brings some heart-felt drama into your students' music-making!
Comments
Do you have a story or even a question about this vocal piece? Share it!
If I publish it, I will not use your last name, and certainly never show your email address (name and address are optional, anyway).
Back from Sad Love Songs Molly Bawn to Beginning Voice for more printable free music
Home for more free sheet music
Marta:
Thank you for the free downloads! I'm a private teacher and I teach piano and beginner voice as well :) I taught middle school choir and elementary music before starting my studio. I've been running my studio for about a year and I've come across the same issue -- I don't want my students to have to purchase an entire supplemental book for only a couple of songs. So thank you for this site...some great downloads!!
Toni:
Thank you for your wonderful website. I also teach piano, voice and guitar - spooky! My absolute passion is opera, and have opened many a singing student's ear to the beautiful melodies and voices in the repertoire. Thank you for the wonderful warmups which I have downloaded, and will be using at the earliest opportunity - I will let you know how they go! Looking forward to more warmup ideas, too.
Useful Sites for Vocalists
ArtSongCentral, source of much free vocal literatureChoralWiki, Home of the Choral Public Domain Library
International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) Petrucci Music Library
Musicnotes.com - transpose vocal sheets up or down!
Note-Perfect.com, Resources for Choral Singers and Soloists - hear your part!
Sheetmusicplus.com
What's New at Sheetmusicplus
Matt:
THIS SITE IS AMAZING!!... Thank you so much for your hard work getting these on the web, you have made many children very happy!!
Marta:
Thank you for the free downloads! I'm a private teacher and I teach piano and beginner voice as well :) I taught middle school choir and elementary music before starting my studio. I've been running my studio for about a year and I've come across the same issue -- I don't want my students to have to purchase an entire supplemental book for only a couple of songs. So thank you for this site...some great downloads!!
Danielle:
What a lovely, generous site! Many thanks from a fellow singer and music teacher in New York State. Loved the inclusion of the video for "The Ash Grove," a song I just recommended to an adult voice student today. I was pleased to be able to send her the link to not only the sheet music, but a charming performance of the song as well.
Wynn:
Thank you so much for this site. I admire you so much for taking the time to reach out and share so much with others. After years of singing professionally I am finally making myself re-learn the piano in order to play for myself and to do some piano bar work. Your scales and your feedback are inspiring! Create Beauty and fill the world with LOVE!
Stasi:
AH!!!!! I am so happy to find a helpful site like this. I started to give piano lessons to one little girl from church and two girls requested VOICE lessons this spring. Since then, word got out and going into the fall I have 18 students. I am so excited, but I'm running out of materials that they can borrow, and I, like you hate telling the parents to buy morebooks. Because I have such a diverse group of students I spend SO much time making supplemental material and I feel like I have to pick through other websites, to only find one or two useful things. I am so thankful for the wealth of supplement that you have offered here! And it's all SO user friendly!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!
Over 60,000 digital sheet music titles!