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"O du lieber Augustin" ("Oh, you dear Augustin") is a popular Viennese song, first published about 1800. It is said to refer to the balladeer Marx Augustin and his brush with death in 1679. Augustin himself is sometimes named as the author, but the origin is unclear.
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In 1679, Vienna was struck by the Great Plague and Augustin was a ballad singer and bagpiper, who toured the city's inns entertaining people. The Viennese people loved Augustin because of his charming humour in bitter times, and they called him Lieber Augustin (Dear Augustin).
According to legend,[ citation needed ] once he was drunk and on his way home he fell in the gutter and went to sleep. He was mistaken for a dead man by the gravediggers patrolling the city for dead bodies. They picked him up and threw him, along with his bagpipes which they presumed were infected, into a pit filled with bodies of plague victims outside the city walls. Next day when Augustin woke up, he was unable to get out of the deep mass grave. He was shocked and after a while he started to play his bagpipes, because he wanted to die the same way he lived. Finally people heard him and he was rescued from this dreadful place. Luckily he remained healthy despite having slept with the infected dead bodies and Augustin became a symbol of hope for Viennese people.
The story, already rendered by the preacher Abraham a Sancta Clara (1644–1709), lives on in the song, which is still popular in Austria. The tune is nearly identical to that of "Did You Ever See a Lassie?", although "O du lieber Augustin" is longer and more melancholic than that song.
O du lieber Augustin, Augustin, Augustin, | Oh, you dear Augustin, Augustin, Augustin, |
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During the classical era the song was a popular theme for variations. E.g. the composer Paul Wranitzky featured it in orchestral variations, in variations for xylophone, strings, trumpet and drums, and as the trio to the menuetto of his Symphony Op. 33, No 3. Johann Nepomuk Hummel wrote S 47, WoO 2 – Variations for orchestra on "O du lieber Augustin" in C major. The clarinettist and composer Anton Stadler used it in his first Caprice for solo clarinet.
The tune appears quoted (recognisably, but in a dissonant context) in the midst of the second movement of Arnold Schoenberg's second quartet, written a month before the height of Schoenberg's marital crisis. An additional significance attaches to the quotation in view of the quartet being the work in which Schoenberg decisively abandons the traditional key-system and embraces consistent atonality.
A Scots song, "Did You Ever See a Lassie?" is set to the same tune:
Did ye ever see a lassie, a lassie, a lassie
Did ye ever see a lassie gae this way and that?
Gae this way and that way, gae this way and that way,
Did ye ever see a lassie gae this way and that?"
In Estonia there is a whole family of stereotypical melodies, probably originated from the Estonian bagpipe-tunes of the 17th century at the latest. The kinship of the Estonian bagpipe dance tunes with the Augustin melody is clear, although verification of origin, in one way or another, is impossible due to the lack of written material. The Estonian Augustin-melody family includes, for example; "Puusaluu" (from Kihnu island), "Las aga mede vana Mari tulla" (from Tori), "Nüüd algavad noodilood" (from Muhu island) etc. Nowadays there is also known among Estonians a toast song, that is sung before drinking: "Selle peale vanad eestlased võtsid üks naps" (And upon that, the old Estonians took a schnapps).
The melody is also the base for: "The More We Get Together" a traditional American folk song and popular children's song dating to the 18th or 19th century.
It was widely used and parodied in cartoons from the early 20th century, and is the melody of the children's folk song, "Hail to the Bus Driver".
The melody is also used in "Fat Turkeys", a children's song sung during the Thanksgiving season in Canada and the United States. Lyrics are:
Oh, gobble, gobble, gobble, fat turkeys, fat turkeys;
Oh, gobble, gobble, gobble, fat turkeys are we.
We walk very proudly and gobble so loudly,
Oh, gobble, gobble, gobble, fat turkeys are we.
Bing Crosby included the song in a medley on his 1961 album 101 Gang Songs .
It appears at the end of the song Spinning Wheel, written by David Clayton-Thomas and performed by Blood, Sweat & Tears.
The melody is also used in "Daar wordt aan de deur geklopt", a Dutch children's song for the celebration of Saint Nicholas Day.
Bagpipes are a woodwind instrument using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. The Great Highland bagpipes are well known, but people have played bagpipes for centuries throughout large parts of Europe, Northern Africa, Western Asia, around the Persian Gulf and northern parts of South Asia.
Vocal music is a type of singing performed by one or more singers, either with instrumental accompaniment, or without instrumental accompaniment, in which singing provides the main focus of the piece. Music which employs singing but does not feature it prominently is generally considered to be instrumental music as is music without singing. Music without any non-vocal instrumental accompaniment is referred to as a cappella.
The great Highland bagpipe is a type of bagpipe native to Scotland, and the Scottish analogue to the great Irish warpipes. It has acquired widespread recognition through its usage in the British military and in pipe bands throughout the world.
Bonnie Dundee is the title of a poem and a song written by Walter Scott in 1825 in honour of John Graham, 7th Laird of Claverhouse, who was created 1st Viscount Dundee in November 1688, then in 1689 led a Jacobite rising in which he died, becoming a Jacobite hero.
"It Came Upon the Midnight Clear", sometimes rendered as "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear", is an 1849 poem and Christmas carol written by Edmund Sears, pastor of the Unitarian Church in Wayland, Massachusetts. In 1850, Sears' lyrics were set to "Carol", a tune written for the poem the same year at his request, by Richard Storrs Willis. This pairing remains the most popular in the United States, while in Commonwealth countries, the lyrics are set to "Noel", a later adaptation by Arthur Sullivan from an English melody.
Pibroch, piobaireachd or ceòl mòr is an art music genre associated primarily with the Scottish Highlands that is characterised by extended compositions with a melodic theme and elaborate formal variations. Strictly meaning 'piping' in Scottish Gaelic, piobaireachd has for some four centuries been music of the great Highland bagpipe.
"Highland Laddie", also known as "Hielan' Laddie", is the name of a Scottish popular folk tune "If Thou'lt Play Me Fair Play", but as with many old melodies various sets of words can be sung to it, of which Robert Burns's poem "Highland Laddie" is probably the best known. "If Thou'lt Play Me Fair Play" has been reworked several times since Burns set down his words, Donkey Riding being one variant.
The Great Plague of Vienna occurred in 1679 in Vienna, Austria, the imperial residence of the Austrian Habsburg rulers. From contemporary descriptions, the disease is believed to have been bubonic plague, which is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, carried by fleas associated with the black rat and other rodents. The city was crippled by the epidemic, which recurred fitfully into the early 1680s, claiming an estimated 76,000 residents.
Augustin may refer to:
Puirt à beul is a traditional form of song native to Scotland that sets Gaelic lyrics to instrumental tune melodies. Historically, they were used to accompany dancing in the absence of instruments and to transmit instrumental tunes orally.
The Bluebells of Scotland is the usual modern name for a Scottish folksong. It was written by Dora Jordan, an English actress and writer. First published in 1801.
"Hey, Johnnie Cope, are Ye Wauking Yet?", also "Hey Johnnie Cope, are you awake yet?", "Heigh! Johnnie Cowp, are ye wauken yet?", or simply "Johnny Cope" is a Scottish folk song that also features in bagpipe recitals.
The torupill is a traditional bagpipe from Estonia.
"Did You Ever See a Lassie?" is a traditional Scottish folk song with a Roud Folk Song Index number of 5040.
This article defines a number of terms that are exclusive, or whose meaning is exclusive, to piping and pipers.
"Oh, whistle and I'll come to you, my lad" is the title and refrain of a poem and song by Robert Burns, first written in 1787, and then expanded in 1793.
"Oh, Dear! What Can the Matter Be?", also known as "Johnny's So Long at the Fair" is a traditional nursery rhyme that can be traced back as far as the 1770s in England. There are several variations on its lyrics. It has Roud Number 1279.
Singing To the Bus Driver or Hail To the Bus Driver is an anonymous United States folk song dating to the mid-20th century. It is a popular children's song, particularly among pre-teens, and is often sung by children on school bus trips to keep themselves amused. It is sung to the tune of the traditional children's songs The More We Get Together and Did You Ever See A Lassie?, which in turn are derived from a 1679 Viennese tune by Marx Augustin, Oh du lieber Augustin.
"The More We Get Together", now regarded today as a popular English-language children's song, of American origin, was originally written by Irving King as the anthem of the Ancient Order of Froth Blowers, to be sung to an old Viennese tune, "O du lieber Augustin". Sheet music of the drinking song and a gramophone recording were issued during the 1920s. Later it featured as a cowboy song in the Columbia Pictures movie series, this time as "The More We Get Together", in Challenge of the Range (1949) and in The Rough, Tough West (1952).
Media related to O du lieber Augustin at Wikimedia Commons
