You don't have to do much scrabbling around to find a good love song, but how about songs about the platonic joys of friendship? They may fewer and further between, but once you've dug a bit, you'll find gems from all corners of the repertory - from classical songs to sea shanties. Here is our top ten.
Best songs about friendship
1. Ludwig van Beethoven: 'Das glück der Freundschaft'
Completed in 1803, around the time that Beethoven was concluding his studies with Salieri in Vienna, this ode to the joy of friendship seems somewhat atypical of the composer. With its flowing, largely stepwise melody and gently undulating piano part, it sounds almost like Schubert. Which only goes to show just how much musical distance Beethoven managed to cover over the course of a relatively short career.
2. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: 'An die Freundschaft', K418
Mozart's 1768 setting of Ludwig Lenz's poem to friendship does not rank amongst his best known works, but it is nonetheless charming in its simplicity. That simplicity is also its greatest challenge: how best to honour the song’s warmth of emotion without overwhelming it with excessive pathos? Fortunately, in the clip below, baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau makes a pretty good fist of it.
3. William Arms Fisher: 'Goin’ home'
The tune is easily recognisable as the Largo from Dvořák's 'New World' Symphony. The words, however, are by William Arms Fisher, a student of Dvořák during the Czech composer’s stint at the National Conservatory of Music in New York City from 1892 to 1895.
Inspired by the beauty of the melody, as well as its profound sense of homesickness, Fisher reimagined it as a song, with words that express a deep longing for home as well all the people associated with it: ‘Mother's there 'spectin' me, Father's waitin' too; Lots o'folk gather'd there, All the friends I knew.’ The result was this beautiful spiritual, and one of the most moving songs about friendship.
4. Robert Schumann: ‘O Freund, mein Schirm, mein Schutz!’ from Miennespiel, Op 101
While the title means ‘O friend, my shield, my shelter,’ the music of this 1849 song by Schumann is chromatic and turbulent, implying that the song’s focus is on the anguish of seeking shelter in a friend, rather than the solace of finding it. Even the ending, with its chromatically descending piano line, hints at the sense of melancholy lurking beneath the text: ‘Oh world, whatever you may do to me, I rest in quiet joy/ On my friend's breast!’
5. Scottish trad: 'Auld Lang Syne'
You might have heard of this one? Based on a Scots-language poem written by Robert Burns in 1788, this affirmation of brotherhood and the importance of continued friendship has long been a pillar of Scots tradition. But 'Auld Lang Syne' also does sterling service all over the British Isles, where it is belted out at Hogmanay gatherings, the BBC Proms, funerals, graduations, and basically any event that gives us a half-decent excuse to indulge our inner sentimentalist.
More great songs about friendship
6. Simon and Garfunkel: ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’
Written by Paul Simon of Simon and Garfunkel, this 1970 song took its inspiration from some very eclectic sources. The title came from the American gospel group the Swan Silvertone, whose song ‘Mary Don’t You Weep’ contains the line ‘I’ll be your bridge over deep water, if you trust in my name.’
As for the music: parts of that were inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach’s ‘O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.’ The result was one of the most moving and most recorded songs of the 20th century, whose beautiful melody and message about the supportive role of friendship in hard times had a universal resonance.
Ironically, it didn’t do Simon and Garfunkel’s friendship much good. As their relations frayed in the run up to their 1970 breakup, Simon began to regret allowing Garfunkel to sing it solo, as he later explained: 'He felt I should have done it, and many times on a stage, though, when I'd be sitting off to the side and Larry Knechtel would be playing the piano and Artie would be singing "Bridge", people would stomp and cheer when it was over, and I would think, "That's my song, man…”’
7. G.W. Hunt: 'Dear Old Pals'
This music-hall song was made famous by the comic singer G.H.McDermott - one of the biggest stars of Victorian music hall - and was later sung by no less than Charlie Chaplin. Written in 1877 by G.W. Hunt, it celebrates long-lasting friendship, with a surface jollity that belies its depth: ‘We've tasted of the ‘ups' of life, we've also felt its ‘downs' / Sometimes our pockets held bright gold, and sometimes only ‘browns' /And be our drink bright sparkling ‘cham', or merely humble beer / The grasp of friendship's been the same, through each succeeding year.’
8. Gustav Mahler: 'Der Abschied' from Das Lied von der Erde
Translating as ‘The Farewell’, the last movement of Mahler’s great cycle for two voices and orchestra depicts an exchange between two friends, bidding each other a final farewell. As a concept, that is heartbreaking enough, but what really brings it home is Mahler’s characteristically bittersweet and mercurial music, which scales great emotional heights before gradually dissolving into silence.
9. Paul James and Kay Swift: 'Can’t We Be Friends?'
Although they didn’t actually write the song, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong boosted its stock when they joined forces to record it in 1956. Written in 1929 by Paul James and Kay Swift, it’s a song about unrequited love, in which the narrator discovers the man she thought was the love of her life just wants to be friends. The melody of this jazz classic is upbeat, which makes the message beneath it all the more poignant.
10. Richard Creagh Saunders: 'Don’t Forget your Old Shipmate'
Like the best sea shanties, this one comes with a universal message about the binding power of shared experience: ‘Long we've tossed on the rolling main, now we're safe ashore, Jack. Don't forget yer old shipmate, faldee raldee raldee raldee rye-eye-doe!’ It was written by Richard Creagh Saunders (1809-1886), who enlisted in the navy as a Schoolmaster on 11 July, 1839.
Since then it has continued to be sung aboard by surface combatant ships of the Royal Navy, and had a starring appearance in the wardroom scene of the 2003 American war-drama film: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.
