“America the Beautiful” is a patriotic American song. Its lyrics were written by Katharine Lee Bates and its music was composed by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward at Grace Episcopal Church in Newark, New Jersey. The two never met.
Bates wrote the words as a poem, originally entitled “Pikes Peak”. It was first published in the Fourth of July 1895 edition of the church periodical, The Congregationalist. At that time, the poem was entitled “America”.
Ward had initially composed the song’s melody in 1882 to accompany lyrics to “Materna”, basis of the hymn, “O Mother dear, Jerusalem”, though the hymn was not first published until 1892. The combination of Ward’s melody and Bates’s poem was first entitled “America the Beautiful” in 1910. The song is one of the most popular of the many American patriotic songs.
Song lesson list
I’ve made lessons for literally hundreds of songs for students over the years- all different types of music, different genres and differing levels of complexity. Check out the song list page linked above and see if there’s something there you’d like to cover. Many of them have a combination of chord and lyric sheets, lead sheets, video lessons and style examples. If you’re interested in a song you don’t see, let me know!
