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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. 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?" and "The More We Get Together", 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.
Tom Lehrer quoted the song in his own song "Wernher von Braun" about the German-American rocket scientist of that name.
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.
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"Turkey in the Straw" is an American folk song that first gained popularity in the 19th century. Early versions of the song were titled "Zip Coon", which were first published around 1834 and performed in minstrel shows, with different people claiming authorship of the song. The melody of "Zip Coon" later became known as "Turkey in the Straw"; a song titled "Turkey in de Straw" with different music and lyrics was published in 1861 together with the wordless music of "Zip Coon" added at the end, and the title "Turkey in the Straw" then became linked to the tune of "Zip Coon".
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"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:
"The Water Is Wide" is a folk song of British origin. It remains popular in the 21st century. Cecil Sharp published the song in Folk Songs From Somerset (1906).
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.
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"Did You Ever See a Lassie?" is a traditional Scottish folk song with a Roud Folk Song Index number of 5040.
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"Wild Mountain Thyme" is a Scottish/Irish folk song. The lyrics and melody are a variant of the song "The Braes of Balquhither" by Scottish poet Robert Tannahill (1774–1810) and Scottish composer Robert Archibald Smith (1780–1829), but were adapted by Belfast musician Francis McPeake (1885–1971) into "Wild Mountain Thyme" and first recorded by his family in the 1950s.
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"Spinning Wheel" is a song recorded in 1968 by Jazz fusion/Rock band Blood, Sweat & Tears; it was written by Canadian lead vocalist David Clayton-Thomas and included on their eponymous album, released in 1968.
"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).
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Oh, Dear Augustine is a 1922 Austrian silent film directed by Hans Karl Breslauer and starring Willi Forst. It takes its title from the popular Viennese song "Oh du lieber Augustin".
Media related to O du lieber Augustin at Wikimedia Commons
