Do-Re-Mi
"Do-Re-Mi" is a show tune from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "The Sound of Music". Within the story, it is used by Maria to teach the solfège of the major musical scale to the Von Trapp children who learn to sing for the first time, even though their father disallowed frivolity after their mother's death. Each syllable of the musical solfège system appears in the song's lyrics, sung on the pitch it names. Rodgers was helped in its creation by long-time arranger Trude Rittmann who devised the extended vocal sequence in  the song. According to assistant conductor Peter Howard, the heart of the number – in which Maria assigns a musical tone to each child, like so many Swiss bell ringers – was devised in rehearsal by Rittmann (who was credited for choral arrangements) and choreographer Joe Layton. The fourteen note and tune lyric – 'when you know the notes to sing...' – were provided by Rodgers and Hammerstein; the rest, apparently, came from Rittmann. Howard: 'Rodgers allowed her to do whatever she liked. When we started doing the staging of it, Joe took over. He asked Trude for certain parts to be repeated, certain  embellishments.' In the stage version, Maria sings this song in the living room of Captain von Trapp's house, shortly after she introduces herself to the children. However, when Ernest Lehman adapted the stage script into a screenplay for the 1965 film adaptation, he moved the song to later on in the story. In the film, Maria and the children sing this song over a montage as they wander and frolic over Salzburg. Later on, in both the film and stage versions, a more intricate reprise of the song is sung in the style of a Bach cantata, showing the  audience how versatile they were at multi-part choral singing. The tune finished at #88 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of the top tunes in American cinema in 2004. Word meanings. "(For the actual origins of the solfège, refer to Solfège.)" The lyrics teach the solfège syllables by linking them with English homophones (or near-homophones): As the song concludes, "When you know the notes to sing, you can sing most anything." Author Douglas Adams noted in his article "Unfinished Business of the Century" that, while each line of the lyric takes the name of a note  from the solfège scale, and gives its meaning, "La, a note to follow So..." does not fit that pattern and should be considered a placeholder. Adams humorously imagined that Oscar Hammerstein just wrote "a note to follow So" and thought he would have another look at it later, but could not come up with anything better. Foreign language versions. Since the song features wordplay with English words that sound like the solfège syllables, foreign versions of the song do not translate the English lyrics. Instead, they use the local solfège and associate each syllable with a meaning in the native  language. In most countries, the note B is represented by "si" instead of "ti". Austrian version with letters. When "The Sound of Music" was translated to German in 2005 for the Vienna Volksoper, the song "Do-Re-Mi" was rewritten as "C wie Cellophanpapier". The solfège syllables were replaced with the letters C through H, and the mnemonics were words that began with each letter. However, when the musical finally premiered in its setting of Salzburg in 2011, it was performed with a German version of Do-Re-Mi that kept the solfège. In popular culture. Anita Bryant released a  version as a single in 1959 which reached #94 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. Backing orchestrations were done by Monty Kelly, and Bryant was accompanied by a children's chorus. Her version also appeared on her eponymous debut album, which features covers of songs taken from Broadway shows. The American rock band Sparks recorded a hard rock rendition of the song for their 1973 album "A Woofer in Tweeter's Clothing". The religious suicide cult Heaven's Gate rewrote the lyrics to the song to describe their beliefs and would regularly perform this. The song was included in season 1  of "Chilling Adventures of Sabrina." The song is sung at football matches by members of the Tartan Army. This originated during a Scotland national football team away fixture against Austria national football team during the Qualifying round of the 1998 FIFA World Cup and has continued to be used since.