Auld Lang Syne: notes, key and chords

Overview

"Auld Lang Syne" is a Scottish song. In the English-speaking world it is traditionally sung to bid farewell to the old year at the stroke of midnight on Hogmanay, or New Year's Eve. It is also often heard at funerals and graduations and as a farewell or ending to other occasions; for instance, many branches of the Scouting movement use it to close jamborees and other functions.

The text is a Scots-language poem written by Robert Burns in 1788, but it is based on an older Scottish folk song. In 1799 it was set to a traditional pentatonic tune, which has since become standard. "Auld Lang Syne" is listed as numbers 6294 and 13892 in the Roud Folk Song Index.

History

Burns sent a copy of the original song to the Scots Musical Museum in 1788 with the remark, "The following song, an old song, of the olden times, and which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript until I took it down from an old man."

Should Old Acquaintance be forgot, and never thought upon; The flames of Love extinguished, and fully past and gone: Is thy sweet Heart now grown so cold, that loving Breast of thine; That thou canst never once reflect On old long syne.

It is a fair supposition to attribute the rest of the poem to Burns himself.

The song originally had another melody, which can be traced to around 1700 and was deemed "mediocre" by Robert Burns. The first documented use of the melody commonly used today was in 1799, in the second volume of George Thomson's Select Songs of Scotland. The tune is a pentatonic Scots folk melody, which was probably originally a sprightly dance with a much quicker tempo. There is some doubt as to whether this melody is the one Burns originally intended his version of the song to be sung to.

Singing the song on Hogmanay or New Year's Eve very quickly became a Scots custom that soon spread to other parts of the British Isles. As Scots (as well as English, Welsh and Irish people) emigrated around the world, they took the song with them.

Settings and quotations of the melody

The English composer William Shield seems to quote the "Auld Lang Syne" melody briefly at the end of the overture to his opera Rosina (1782), which may be its first recorded use. The contention that Burns borrowed the melody from Shield is for various reasons highly unlikely, although they may very well both have taken it from a common source, possibly a strathspey called "The Miller's Wedding" or "The Miller's Daughter".

In 1792 the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn arranged Auld Lang Syne as one of over 400 Scottish folk song arrangements commissioned by George Thomson and the publishers William Napier and William Whyte; his arrangement may have helped popularise the song. Ludwig van Beethoven also wrote an arrangement of Auld Lang Syne (WoO 156/11) published as part of his 12 Scottish Folksongs (1814). Both of these classical versions use the original brisk strathspey rhythm.