Edelweiss (song)
Edelweiss or Edelweiss is an English song that the Americans Richard Rodgers (melody) and Oscar Hammerstein (text) created for the American musical The Sound of Music , which premiered in 1959 and is set in Austria . Its original Hollywood film of the same name, My Songs - My Dreams (1965), was immensely successful in terms of viewership, especially in the United States, but did not achieve nearly as much popularity in German-speaking countries. The namesake for the song title is the alpine flower edelweiss .
reception
The song is sung once in the musical The Sound of Music , on a festival stage as the farewell song of Baron von Trapp after Austria's annexation to the Third Reich . In the film My Songs - My Dreams, however, the song is sung several times. The father first sings it together with his daughter Liesl, which is why, according to Herzfeld-Schild (2016), for example , it can be interpreted as a folk song . Later, on stage, the staging gives the song a strong political effect, which Herzfeld-Schild describes as follows: “In front of the watchful eyes of numerous brown shirts and the Gauleiter in the front row, Baron von Trapp leaves his image of Austria deeply emotional and breaking Voice rising musically one last time before emigrating, as a reminiscence and an invitation to his »fellow Austrians« not to forget what and where their home is. After all, almost the entire audience joins his singing at the top of his throat. ”The song, continues the author, dramaturgically stands for Austria and patriotism, for nature and originality and for the threat to the nation from outside and inside.
Because of the political staging of the song in the film, it is widely mistaken for the Austrian national anthem , especially in the United States . US President Ronald Reagan, for example, quoted the song as Austria's anthem during a state visit to Austria and thus caused astonishment among Austrian President Rudolf Kirchschläger . As Heinz Drügh put it, the song contributed to the “imaginary reshaping of Austria from the American point of view”.
Adaptations
The British singer Vince Hill wrote a cover version of the song of the same name , which ranked second on the British music charts for 17 weeks in 1967 and was awarded at least one platinum price due to the high sales figures .
The song can be heard as the theme song in the opening credits of the US science fiction television series The Man in the High Castle , which has been offered by Amazon.com since 2015 and shows a dystopia with the National Socialists and the Japanese as winners of World War II , sung by the Swedish singer Jeanette Olsson . In the first season it is included with shortened lyrics, from the second season with the full lyrics.
Individual evidence
- ^ Marie Louise Herzfeld-Schild: The Sound of Music (1959) - "A Great American Opera"? , in: Frédéric Döhl, Gregor Herzfeld (eds.): "In Search of the› Great American Opera ‹" - Tendencies of American Music Theater , Waxmann Verlag , Münster 2016, ISBN 978-3-8309-8124-4 , p. 113 –130, here: p. 124
- ↑ Heinz Drügh: Over Standing Robert Wise's The Sound of Music. Reflections on Austria's most famous film exiles , in: Ulrich Meurer, Maria Oikonomou (Hrsg.): Foreign images - emigration and exile in international cinema . transcript Verlag , Bielefeld 2009, ISBN 978-3-8376-1122-9 , pp. 87-106, here: p. 101
- ^ Vince Hill stages final farewell at the Kenton , in: Henley Standard, August 13, 2018, accessed March 4, 2019
- ↑ a b Megan Garber: 'Edelweiss': An American Song for Global Dystopia , in: The Atlantic of November 23, 2015, accessed on March 4, 2019