My Sarie Marais

Programme notes

My Sarie Marais is a well-known song in South African. The origins of the song are unclear. Whatever its origins, the song changed and got more verses as time went on. During the 1930s, it was incorrectly played as South Africa's official national anthem.

One version of origins the song refers to the Polish socialist song Gdy Naród do Boju with lyrics written in 1835 by Gustaw Ehrenberg and music composed in 1848 by Fryderyk Chopin.

Another version refers to the American folk song Ellie Rhee, written in 1865 by Septimus Winner (1827–1902). This song would have been sung by Americans working in the Transvaal gold mines, and heard there by Afrikaans journalist and poet Jacobus Petrus Toerien, who re-wrote the song in Afrikaans, replacing the name of Ellie Rhee with that of his own beloved Sarie Maré (Susara Margaretha Maré).

Yet another account is that the song dates from the First Anglo-Boer War (1880–1881). When Ella de Wet, wife of General Louis Botha's military attaché Nicolaas Jacobus de Wet came to the battle front to see her husband she often played on the piano. Singers supposedly wanted to honour their field chaplain Dominee Paul Nel, who often told stories around the campfires about his childhood and his beautiful mother Sarie Maré, who died young. This accounts for the reference to the Kakies (af) (or khakis), as the Boers called the British soldiers during the Second Anglo-Boer War. They were known as Rooibaadjies ("red coats") during the First Anglo-Boer War.

English translation of the chorus

Oh bring me back to the dear old Transvaal/ it's where my Sarie lives/ beneath the corn/ at the green thron tree/ there my Sarie lives.

Arrangement

Prof Edwin Thumboo, Director of the Centre of the Arts at the National University of Singapore asked Casteels to arrange the song for the NUS Kent Ridge Xin Yun Quintet for their concert tour in South Africa from 23-VI to 4-VII-2004. The Xin Yun Quintet was a Singapore-based chamber music ensemble, specifically associated with the National University of Singapore (NUS) Kent Ridge Ensembles Group in the mid-2000s.The name "Xin Yun" (心韵) means music from the heart.

Handwritten sketches and drafts

to be found on page 12 of the red cover, A4 size, 385 pages, sketchbook 

Completion of the composition 

30-X-2004