Read-along video, played by Bev Shaw and Liam Britten

Bev Shaw (the violinist in the video of Pamela singing Another Bright Star for our mother’s funeral) and her guitarist/tech wizard son, Liam Britten, took advantage of being isolated in different places to produce this recording of Pamela’s Waltz to the Angels. I’ve added it to the read-along animated score.

Audio only, by Bev and Liam

Sheet music download

Sheet music preview

For practice

Editor’s notes

Was this waltz ever going to be a song? Pam started writing words for it, but only got 16 bars in.

Music wafting from Heaven, rocking the world on your wings
Give us the grace to hear the voices of beloved angels as they sing

Sometimes I think that Pamela was challenging herself to practice things she’d learned when studying music at Concordia University back in the 1980s. This waltz was originally written in A♭, and the chords are in Roman numerals. “Capo 1” is written in the top left corner, which makes me think she never actually played it with the bar chords that the key of A♭ would demand on the guitar (which she did know how to do, by the way) but played it in G if she played it on guitar at all. In March 2006 she had just moved to Perth, and I think she had access to a piano.

So I’ve written in out in G. Capo it if you want, but your fiddlers and penny whistlers will be happy if you keep it in G. The key of A♭ is home to some very fine piano waltzes, which worked well for Chopin and Brahms, but if this one is going to get played for dances, G it is. It’s going to be in my repertoire.