Folk Songs & Songs for Children

This is a selectio of 24 different German folk songs and songs for children. This is a digital recording, and it was released on Philips in 1983, and originally released in 1982.

## Details

Folk-Songs and Songs for Children

1. **Lieber Schwester, tanz mit mir** - 1:40
2. **Es tanzt ein Bibabutzemann** - 1:49
3. **Auf einem Baum ein Kuckuck sass** - 1:08
4. **Der Kuckuck und der Esel** - 1:14
5. **Zum Muttertag** - 1:10
6. **Es klappert die Mühle** - 2:03
7. **Heidenröslein** - 2:11
8. **Ein Männlein steht im Walde** - 1:21
9. **Mit dem Pfeil, dem Bogen** - 2:00
10. **Guter Mond, du gehst so stille** - 3:01
11. **Abendlied** (Der Mond ist aufgegangen) - 2:18
12. **Wer hat die schönsten Schäfchen** - 1:54
13. **Als unser Mops ein Möpschen war** - 1:41
14. **Kommt ein Vogerl geflogen** - 1:23
15. **Gesternabend ging ich aus** - 1:06
16. **Summ, summ, summ, Bienchen, summ herum** - 1:06
17. **Es regnet, die Erde wird nass** - 1:04
18. **Der Jäger aus Kurpfalz** - 1:16
19. **Sehnsucht nach dem Frühling** (Komm, lieber Mai) - 2:03
20. **Kuckuck, kuckuck, ruft's aus dem Wald** - 1:04
21. **Wie lieblich schallt** - 2:25
22. **Weisst du, wieviel Sterne stehen** - 2:28
23. **Sandmännchen** (Die Blümelein, sie schlaflen) - 4:48
24. **Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf** - 1:18

Total length: 40 minutes

* Choir: Vienna Boys' Choir
* Orchestra: Vienna Chamber Orchestra
* Pianist: Franz Farnberger
* Harpist: Adelheid Miller
* Conductor: Uwe Christian Harrer

Recorded: Vienna, 9/1981

Photo: Foto Fayer, Vienna

Catalogue Numbers:

* CD: 400 014-2
* LP: 6514 188
* Cassette: 7337 188

## Liner Notes

Twice a year the opportunity arises of competing for entry to one of Europe's most famous choirs. Then hopeful parents from all parts of Austria bring their seven and eight-year-old sons to the grounds of the Augarten in Vienna. There the boys stand, wide-eyed and with thumping hearts, in front of the magnificent palace that houses the Vienna Boys' Choir, hoping that they too will be accepted into the school, into the illustrious band of musical ambassadors of Austria, and will be allowed to wear the coveted sailor-suit. But the competition is fierce. Only when one of them, after a trial period and at a maximum age of nine, has passed the entrance examination does he finally know that he has been blessed by God with a beautiful voice, musicality, intelligence, and good health. But he will not consider himself a star - he just hasn't the time. Besides normal school-work there is daily choir practice and individual tuition in singing and mastering an instrument. Other children would complain if subjected to this kind of stress - but the boys of the choir enjoy it as a challenge to their ability. Every Sunday, together with men of the State Opera Chorus and the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, they sing masses by Haydn, Mozart, and other composers in the court chapel. They take all the children's parts at the Staatsoper, make recordings, and sing in the great oratorios and Passions. Since one choir alone could not meet all these obligations, the artistic directors always work with four equal and exactly matched choirs of 24 boys between the ages of 10 and 14. Two carry on the day-to-day musical work of the school, two travel throughout half the world giving concerts, making up on their return the school-work they have missed while on tour.

What they have recorded here are songs they will, for the most part, have heard already as toddlers from their parents, and which are known throughout the German-speaking world - lively songs, cheerful songs, evening songs, to which they must once have danced clumsily and played with their parents, or whose strains must have lulled them to sleep. Who composed them is a question that, as so often with folk-songs, does not always admit of a definite answer. Naturally, every Austrian learns in his first year at school that Mozart wrote in the last months of his life the little spring song "Komm, lieber Mai." Likewise, he knows that the "Butzemann" is a tiny hobgoblin who carries off disobedient children in his sack. But for other songs one must go back to history. The song "Heidenröslein" is based, purportedly, on an experience of the young Goethe. The text has been set some 50 times; the melody that has endured as a "folk-song" is that by the Brunswick music-teacher and choirmaster Heinrich Werner, published in the collection "Arion" in 1829. Even older is the lullaby "Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf"; Goethe's contemporary Reichardt published it in his "Cradle-songs for good German mothers" (1798) with the dedication "to Sophie", who was to sing it to her doll and thereby "awaken pleasant feeling" in herself and others. And can anyone seriously doubt that these "pleasant feelings" will be aroused also by the other songs? They are all born of a conjunction of play, dance, nature, reflection, and folk-lore, and they still have an appeal for grown-ups as well.

*Uwe Kraemer*

*Translation: Unknown*

## Links

On YouTube, they don't have the playlist for this album.

On Decca Classics, they don't have any more info on this album.

For the official Decca Classics website, click here: https://www.deccaclassics.com/en