Christmas carol, sheet music with note names
Away in a Manger notes: the Mueller tune, letter names and key
Away in a Manger (Mueller tune) in F major, 3/4: all 44 notes with letter names, the home chord, range C4 to C5, words and a worksheet. Free printable PDF.
Two kinds of page: the tune with a letter name under every note, and a worksheet with the names left blank.
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Quick answer
This page has the "Mueller" tune of "Away in a Manger": 44 notes in 16 bars of 3/4, in F major, with a one-beat pick-up and a range of C4 to C5 (12 semitones). Wikipedia says it is the most popular setting in the United States; the other common tune, "Cradle Song", is the usual one in Britain, Ireland and Canada. Below: the melody with a letter name under every note, a version you can play, the words and the checks that were run.
Away in a Manger (Mueller tune) at a glance
- Key
- F major (one flat)
- Time signature
- 3/4, with a one-beat pick-up
- Range
- C4 to C5, 12 semitones
- Notes and bars
- 44 notes, 16 bars
- First note
- C5 (scale degree 5)
- Last note
- F4 (scale degree 1)
- Tune
- "Mueller", James R. Murray, first published in Dainty Songs for Little Lads and Lasses, 1887 (Wikipedia)
- Words
- Anonymous; first found in The Christian Cynosure, 2 March 1882; verse 3 first printed in 1892
- Why it is free to use
- The tune was published in 1887 and the words in 1882 and 1892; the score used is the one printed in Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), checked against a Mutopia typesetting
- Level
- Medium: wider than a major sixth (12 semitones); a leap of a minor sixth or more. How the level is worked out
- Tempo
- about quarter note = 106 when played at normal speed
Press a note on the staff to hear it. The sound is made in your browser from the notes of this page (a plain synthesiser, not a recording).
Away in a Manger (Mueller tune)
F major · 3/4 · melody with note names
Key F major (one flat: B♭) Range C4 to C5 Words Anonymous; first printed on 2 March 1882 (verse 3 first printed in 1892) Music "Mueller" tune, James R. Murray, first published in 1887
Scale of F major F G A B♭ C D E I F: F A C IV B♭: B♭ D F V C: C E G
Melody: Wikipedia, "Away in a Manger" (score 1 in the article) (CC BY-SA 4.0; revision 1331519026 of 2026-01-06), checked note by note against 2 other editions. Free to print and share. musictheoryprint.com/charts/away-in-a-manger-notes
Away in a Manger (Mueller tune): name the notes
F major · 3/4 · worksheet
Name Date Class
Write the letter name of every note on the line under it. The key signature tells you which notes are flat: B♭. The last note of a tune is usually the home note, F.
Check your answers against the sheet with the note names. Extra: circle every note that is a F, the home note of the key.
Melody: Wikipedia, "Away in a Manger" (score 1 in the article) (CC BY-SA 4.0). Free to print and share. musictheoryprint.com/charts/away-in-a-manger-notes
The notes of Away in a Manger (Mueller tune), bar by bar
44 notes in 16 bars, after a pick-up, in F major. Letter names, the do-re-mi syllables (movable do: do is F) and the chord symbols of the setting, where there are any. “held” means a tied note that is not played again.
| Bar | Notes | do re mi |
|---|---|---|
| pick-up | C | sol |
| 1 | C B♭ A | sol fa mi |
| 2 | A G F | mi re do |
| 3 | F E D | do ti la |
| 4 | C C | sol sol |
| 5 | C D C | sol la sol |
| 6 | C G E | sol re ti |
| 7 | D C F | la sol do |
| 8 | A C | mi sol |
| 9 | C B♭ A | sol fa mi |
| 10 | A G F | mi re do |
| 11 | F E D | do ti la |
| 12 | C C | sol sol |
| 13 | B♭ A G | fa mi re |
| 14 | A G F | mi re do |
| 15 | G D E | re la ti |
| 16 | F | do |
What the tune is made of
How the melody moves
Each of the 43 moves from one note to the next, counted.
Which note lengths it uses
Every note counted by its length, as a fraction of a whole note.
Most-used note: C4 (8 times). Longest run of one repeated note: 3. Different pitches: 8, made from 7 note names (some are used in two octaves). Biggest leap: 10 semitones.
The words of Away in a Manger (Mueller tune)
The wording of Kirkpatrick (1895)
Verse 1
Away in a manger, no crib for a bed,
The little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head.
The stars in the bright sky looked down where he lay,
The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay.
Verse 2
The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes,
But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.
I love thee, Lord Jesus! look down from the sky,
And stay by my cradle till morning is nigh.
Verse 3
Be near me, Lord Jesus; I ask thee to stay
Close by me forever, and love me I pray.
Bless all the dear children in thy tender care,
And take us to heaven to live with thee there.
Source: Wikipedia, "Away in a Manger", section Words; words in the public domain (first printed 1882; verse 3 first printed 1892); page text CC BY-SA 4.0; revision 1331519026 of 2026-01-06. Wikipedia prints this wording, taken from Kirkpatrick's 1895 book, and lists the variants line by line. Murray's 1887 book, which is where the Mueller tune comes from, has verses 1 and 2 only and words some lines differently; verse 3 is first found in a book of 1892.
How the notes were checked
Not one note on this page was typed in or remembered. The melody is read by a program from Wikipedia, "Away in a Manger" (score 1 in the article) (CC BY-SA 4.0; revision 1331519026 of 2026-01-06). A second program then looked for the same notes, in the same order, in each of the editions below, which were typeset and encoded by other people. The number is the share of this page’s 44 notes that are found there, whatever key the other edition is in.
| Edition | Licence | Notes there | Same pitches | Same pitches and lengths |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mutopia Project, "Mueller (hymntune)" (Steve Dunlop)Mutopia-2008/01/13-1264 | Public Domain | 44 | 100% | 91% |
| Wikipedia, "Away in a Manger": the MIDI file made from the article's scorerevision 1331519026, file SHA-1 a55bf6dc57 | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 44 | 100% | 100% |
The rhythm column is lower than the pitch column because editions write the same long notes in different ways (a half note and a tied pair, a held last note) and because performance MIDI files shorten or lengthen notes. Pitch is the part that matters for the letter names.
Away in a Manger (Mueller tune): questions people ask
Which tune of "Away in a Manger" is this?
The tune called "Mueller", by James R. Murray (1887). Wikipedia says it is the most popular musical setting in the United States, and that the standard melody in Britain, Ireland and Canada is "Cradle Song" by William J. Kirkpatrick (1895). The two are different tunes: "Mueller" starts C C B♭ A A G, while "Cradle Song" starts C F F G A F in the open score of Wikipedia's article. This page does not print "Cradle Song".
What are the notes of "Away in a Manger" (Mueller)?
In F major the first line, "Away in a manger, no crib for a bed", is C C B♭ A A G F F, after the pick-up. The whole tune uses 7 note names (C B♭ A G F E D). Every note is on the printable sheet above.
What key and time signature is it in?
The score used here is in F major (one flat) and in 3/4, with a one-beat pick-up. The Mutopia typesetting writes the same notes in 4/4, with the bar lines in different places, so 4 of this page's notes (in bars 2 and 10) differ from it in length. F major is the number 1 key of 24 in the OpenScore Lieder Corpus (8.9% of 1,462 songs) and number 4 in the Mutopia Project (9.5% of 1,974 pieces).
What chords go with "Away in a Manger"? What are the guitar chords?
This page prints no chord symbols. The only open four-part edition (Mutopia) is barred in 4/4, so its chords cannot be placed on this 3/4 sheet, and the score used here has the melody alone. What the notes say: the home chord is F major (F A C), and 26 of the 44 notes of the tune are one of those three notes. The tune starts on C5 and ends on F4. Chord symbols belong to a particular arrangement, so take them from a published one.
Did Martin Luther write "Away in a Manger"?
No. Wikipedia says that early printings credited the words to Martin Luther, but that this is now rejected: no text in Luther's writings matches it, and no German text has been found from before 1934, more than 50 years after the first English printing. The earliest known appearance is in The Christian Cynosure of 2 March 1882. Wikipedia says the carol is now thought to be wholly American in origin.
Who wrote the third verse?
Nobody knows. Wikipedia says the third verse, "Be near me, Lord Jesus", is missing from the early sources and first appears in Gabriel's Vineyard Songs (1892). A story credits John T. McFarland with writing it in 1904 to 1908, but Wikipedia quotes the historian Richard Hill, who judges that the 1892 date makes that story suspect.
Can I print this sheet music?
Yes. The words are from 1882 and 1892 and the tune from 1887, so they are out of copyright, and the sheet is made by this site. The words printed are those of Kirkpatrick's 1895 book as Wikipedia gives them; other books word some lines differently.
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Away in a Manger (Mueller tune) in real music: the numbers
In F major the tune uses 7 of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale, all of them inside the key. It moves by step 26 times out of 43, and ends on the home note, as 75% of major-key art songs do.
This tune against real art songs
| What | This tune | OpenScore Lieder (880 major-key songs) |
|---|---|---|
| First note | C5 (degree 5) | 41.7% start on degree 5 |
| Last note | F4 (degree 1) | 75.1% end on degree 1 |
| Range of the tune | 12 semitones (C4 to C5) | 3% of 1,458 first vocal lines span fewer semitones, 90% more |
The art-song numbers are for the first vocal line of every major-key song whose key signature does not change; the carol numbers are counted on the melody printed above.
How common F major is
| Collection | Items with a key | Share in F major | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenScore Lieder | 1,462 | 8.9% | 1 of 24 |
| Mutopia | 1,974 | 9.5% | 4 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 13,669 | 7.9% | 4 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 5,340 | 7.4% | 5 of 24 |
| Open Opus work titles | 3,587 | 8.4% | 4 of 24 |
| AcousticBrainz recordings | 63,124 | 7.8% | 3 of 24 |
Counts of key signatures (and estimated major or minor) in the collections the site has measured; see the key page for F major.
Where the tune sits among singers' ranges
| Voice type (as labelled in the scores) | Typical range of a real song line | This tune (C4 to C5) |
|---|---|---|
| Soprano | E♭4 to F5 | fits if moved up 3 semitones |
| Alto / Contralto | C4 to C5 | fits as written |
| Tenor | F3 to F♯4 | fits if moved down 6 semitones |
| Baritone | C3 to E4 | fits if moved down 8 semitones |
| Bass | A2 to C4 | fits if moved down 12 semitones |
Typical range = the median across song lines of the lowest and highest notes (ignoring one stray note each side), from 285 vocal lines in the OpenScore Lieder Corpus. "Fits" means both ends of the tune are inside it.
Method
- The carol's own numbers are counted by a script on the decoded melody (tied notes counted once, rests ignored).
- Art-song numbers are read from the files behind the site's statistics pages (OpenScore Lieder Corpus: key and scale-degree counts for the first vocal line of every piece, vocal ranges of 1,458 lines).
- Key counts for Mutopia and MusicBrainz come from the same published statistics; a key is counted from its key signature.
Data: computed from the OpenScore Lieder Corpus (CC0), 1,462 scores. Snapshot: commit 6b2dc542ce (2026-04-07).
Background
Excerpts from open reference works, reproduced as published (references, images and tables removed). Every excerpt names its source, licence and original article.
History of "Away in a Manger (Mueller tune)"
"Away in a Manger" is a Christmas carol first published in the late nineteenth century and used widely throughout the English-speaking world. In Britain, it is one of the most popular carols; a 1996 Gallup Poll ranked it joint second. Although it was long claimed to be the work of German religious reformer Martin Luther, the carol is now thought to be wholly American in origin. The two most common musical settings are by William J. Kirkpatrick (1895) and James Ramsey Murray (1887).
Source: Wikipedia, “Away in a Manger” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-01-06.
Sources and licences for the text, scores and recordings on this page are on the credits page.
Sources: Wikipedia, "Away in a Manger" (score 1 in the article), Mutopia Project, "Mueller (hymntune)" (Steve Dunlop).