Sheet Music: Vande Mataram

TitleVande Mataram
Alternate titlesBande Mataram
Mother, I bow to thee
ComposerJadunath Bhattacharya (1840–1884)
InstrumentationFlute solo
KeyB-flat major
RangeBb4–C6
Time signature4/4
Tempo100 BPM
Performance time1:05
Difficulty levelintermediate
Download printable scorePDF Sheet Music (49 kB) (preview)
Download audio tracksMIDI (change tempo/key) MP3 (508 kB)
Date added2010-06-07
Last updated2010-06-07
Download popularity index☆☆☆☆☆ 0.8 (average)
Categories
Patriotic, Traditional/Folk

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Monday 7 June 2010

Tune of the Day: Vande Mataram

Indian national song

“Vande Mataram” (“I do homage to the mother”) is a poem from the 1882 novel Anandamatha by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay. It is a hymn to the goddess Durga, identified as the national personification of Bengal, and it came to be considered the “National Anthem of Bengal”, playing a part in the Indian independence movement.

It is generally believed that the concept of Vande Mataram came to Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay when he was still a government official under the British Raj, around 1875. Chattopadhyay wrote the poem in a spontaneous session using words from Sanskrit and Bengali, and Jadunath Bhattacharya was asked to set a tune for this song just after it was written.

The poem has since been set to a large number of tunes. The oldest surviving audio recordings date to 1907, and there have been more than a hundred different versions recorded throughout the 20th century. In 2002, the BBC conducted an international poll to choose the ten most famous songs of all time. “Vande Mataram”, in a version by A.R. Rahman, arrived second.