America the Beautiful sheet music for easy piano

The America the Beautiful sheet music above is in C major and 4/4 time, with the letter name printed under every note; switch to the Letter notes tab to see the melody as plain letters. It is the complete tune for one verse, four lines long, arranged for the right hand. The range is modest, from the D just above middle C to the E an octave and a step higher, and the only black key is a single C sharp. Listen plays the song and highlights each note in the sheet, and Practice lights the next key and waits for you to press it, which makes this a good second or third song once simple tunes feel comfortable.

About America the Beautiful

The words were written by Katharine Lee Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College. A trip west in 1893, including the view from the top of Pikes Peak in Colorado, gave her the images in the poem, which was first printed on July 4, 1895, in a church magazine called The Congregationalist. She revised the text in 1904 and again in 1911.

The music has a separate history. Samuel A. Ward, organist and choirmaster at Grace Church in Newark, New Jersey, composed the tune in 1882 for an older hymn, "O Mother dear, Jerusalem", and named it Materna. Words and tune were first printed together in 1910 under the title America the Beautiful. Ward had died in 1903, and he and Bates never met.

Hymnals often print the song in B-flat major. This page moves it to C major so the melody sits almost entirely on white keys.

How to play America the Beautiful

The song has four lines of four bars, and each line starts from a pickup on the last beat of the bar before. Three hand positions cover everything:

• Line one. Put your thumb on D, the white key right of middle C, and one finger on each key up to A. The line starts G E E G, fingers 4 2 2 4, and ends by walking up F G A B. For the B, reach your little finger one key past A.
• Lines two and three. Line two starts like the first but jumps from the low D to the D an octave higher. Move your thumb to A: now B, C, D and E sit under fingers 2 to 5, and the C sharp is finger 3 on the black key between C and D. Stay here for line three, which starts on the high E and ends on C; reach your thumb down one key for the G near its end.
• Line four. Move your thumb to G. The last line then fits under the hand exactly, with C on finger 4 and the final D on finger 5, before the song closes on C.

Counting the rhythm

Count four beats in each bar: 1 2 3 4. The song opens on a single G on beat 4, a pickup, before the first full bar. The first two bars of every line then share one pattern: a dotted quarter note held for a beat and a half, a quick eighth note, and two quarter notes. Count it "1 2-and 3 4", with the long note on 1, the short one on the "and" of 2, and the quarters on 3 and 4. The third bar of each line is four even quarter notes.

Each line ends with a dotted half note of three beats, followed by the next line's pickup on beat 4.

Practice tips

• Learn the first two lines together. They start with the same notes and only part ways halfway through, so practicing them as a pair shows you exactly where the second line turns upward.
• Rehearse the octave. Play the low D and the high D several times in a row before trying the whole second line; that jump is the one moment most likely to land on the wrong key.
• Say "1 2-and 3 4" aloud. The long-short pattern that opens each line gives the song its broad, singing feel, and counting aloud keeps the short note from getting too long.
• Use Practice for the hand moves. It waits for you, so you can take the time you need to move between positions.

For a more demanding patriotic piece, try The Star-Spangled Banner, which is also arranged in C major.

Printable sheet music

Here is the same arrangement on a single page, with the letter name under every note. Open the image to print it or save it; the Print sheet music button above the keyboard prints it too.