While "The Sound of Music" was in tryouts in Boston, Richard Rodgers felt Captain von Trapp should have a song with which he would bid farewell to the Austria he knew and loved. Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II decided to write an extra song that von Trapp would sing in the festival concert sequence towards the end of the show. As they were writing it, they felt this song could also use the guitar-playing and folk-singing talents of Theodore Bikel, who had been cast as the Captain. The Lindsay and Crouse script provides the metaphor of the simple edelweiss wildflower as a symbol of the Austria that Captain von Trapp, Maria, and their children knew would live on, in their hearts, despite the Nazi annexation of their homeland. The metaphor of this song builds on an earlier scene when Gretl presents a bouquet of edelweiss flowers to Baroness Elsa Schräder, during the latter's visit to the von Trapp household.