Listen to: Sylvia’s Lullaby

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

11 January 2009
This song, my first one to be put on this website, is a lullaby I wrote for my, then five year old daughter, Sylvia, at the beginning of 2007.

Sylvia, probably like a lot of other children, has trouble getting to sleep at times. And as I find it hard enough to fit in a harp practice into my busy day, I thought, why not play her to sleep?

So I started to play her tunes from Sylvia Woods’ “76 Disney Songs for the Harp”, which has some lovely arrangements. Sylvia knows a lot of the songs, and they calm her down and send her off to sleep.

Still, Sylvia would have nightmares from time to time, so one night, I had played her to sleep, and was still playing, I came up with this lullaby, which would include some of her favourite things. Something to go to sleep with and to override her nightmares.

I put this song on the website, because I thought, that perhaps other harp playing parents would like to try playing their young ones to sleep. It almost always works with Sylvia, and once I even played to her and a friend, who was staying over, and with whom she’d just had a fight. I included both their names in the song. They calmed down and within minutes were asleep!

The song can easily be adapted to other girls, as well as boys, and one would just need to change the notes a bit to fit in the name, and maybe change a few of the “favourite things” to suit.

Feel free to leave a comment below and I will contact you as soon as I can.