Arrangement reflections: And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda by Eric Bogle

I've loved this song for a very long time. It was one of the first songs I remember having a strong emotional effect on me when I was a child - particularly the lines:

"And when our ship pulled in to Circular Quay

And I looked at the place where me legs used to be

I thanked Christ there was nobody waiting for me

To grieve and to mourn, and to pity"

It is a powerful anti-war song. Although not, as Eric Bogle insisted, anti-soldier. The lyrics tell the sad tale of a young man to is drafted into the army, fights at Suvla Bay, gets his legs blown off, and then returns home and reflects on the folly of war.

Musically, it's pretty simple. It stays in D major the whole time, making strong use of primary chords and relative minor chords. It's in waltz time (3/4), and the arrangement stays in strict time pretty much the whole way.

It was satisfying to use some first-inversion and second-inversion chords, especially in bars 69/76 ("Johnny Turk, he was waiting, he'd primed himself well"). I was pleased with the voice leading and overall effect.

A possibly weakness of the song - at least from the point of view of a community choir - is its suitability for performances. It is long (clocking in at 6m25s), emotionally heavy, and really only suitable for an indoors, sit-down audience situation. The gravitas of the song demands a captive audience. And it's something you would put in the middle of a program, probably not at the beginning or the end. That said, when Strange Weather performed it in a marquee at the National Folk Festival, we did get an awe-filled reaction from the audience - so it is worth it for the emotional result.