Do you know how many little stars there are

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Do you know how many stars there are , print version 1852
melody

Do you know how many little stars there are is a German-language folk song . The text comes from the Protestant pastor and poet Wilhelm Hey (1789-1854), who published it in 1837 for the first time. The melody is a folk tune, the current version of which has been documented since 1818.

content

The song is commonly sung as an evening song and a lullaby , especially since the "stars in the sky" since Paul Gerhardt's Now rest all forests (1647) are a common motif of this genre. On closer inspection of the text, however, it is noticeable that sleep is not mentioned until the third stanza, and there, however, about children who get up again in the morning after sleep. In fact, the song is about the care and care God shows in his creation . The text takes up the biblical image of the star-studded sky for the innumerable great descendants ( 1 Mos 15,5  LUT ). The “counting” and “naming” are borrowed from Ps 147.4  LUT . “Counting” in the Old Testament is considered a divine act of rule that people are not entitled to ( 2 Sam 24,2–17  LUT ). The second stanza concretizes this picture, in that God calls the creatures by name ( Isa 40,26  LUT ). The form of the song consists of fictional question-and-answer games in stanzas, in which the same rhetorical question "Do you know how much ..." is followed by an instructive answer. The folk song research ranked the song at the riddle songs one. The song was included in the Evangelical Hymnal (No. 511) in the section "Nature and Seasons".

Melody and lyrics

\ relative a '{\ key f \ major \ time 3/4 \ autoBeamOff \ small \ partial 4 f8 g | a4 a b8 g | d'8 [c] c4 a8 c | c [b] b4 c8 b | a2 f8 g | a4 a b8 g | d'8 [c] c4 a8 c | c [b] b4 c8 b | a2 c8 a | a [g] g4 d'8 b | b [a] a4 c8 a | a [g] g4 d'8 b | b [a] a4 f8 g | a4 a b8 g | d'4 (c) a8 c | c [b] b4 c8 b | a2 \ bar "|." } \ addlyrics {Do you know how many stars stand in front of the blue sky? Do you know how many clouds go far across the world? The Lord God has counted them so that he is not lacking in the whole great number, in the whole great number. }

Original text (1837)

Do you know how many stars are there
in the blue sky?
Do you know how many clouds go far
over the world?
The Lord God has counted them,
That there is not one lacking
in the whole great number.

Do you know how many mosquitoes play
in the bright sunshine?
How many little fish can cool themselves
in the bright water?
The Lord God called them by name,
That they all came to life,
That they are now so happy.

Do you know how many children get up early
from their little beds,
That they
are happy in the course of the day without worry and trouble ?
God in heaven has
His pleasure and pleasure in everyone, He
also knows you and loves you.

Text version customary today

Do you know how many stars are there
in the blue sky?
Do you know how many clouds go
far over the world?
The Lord God has counted them so
that one thing is not lacking
: the whole great number. : |

Do you know how many little mosquitoes play
in the hot sunshine , how many little
fish also cool off
in the bright flood of water?
The Lord God called them by name
that they all came into life
|: that they are now so happy. : |

Do you know how many children get
out of their beds early so
that they
are happy during the day without worry and trouble ?
God in heaven has
his pleasure, his pleasure in everyone ,
|: also knows you and loves you. : |

history

Wilhelm Hey published the text for the first time in 1837 in the “serious appendix” of his second collection for children, Fifty New Fables , which the publisher Friedrich Christoph Perthes initially published anonymously and which was reprinted many times in the 19th century. The Christmas carol every year comes from the same collection .

The first print from 1837 is said to have been accompanied by five sheets of music, which also document the melody assignment of Do you know how many stars are there for the first time. The melody is borrowed from the love song So much star in the sky . A text with these opening words but a three-line stanza structure can be found in the second volume of Des Knaben Wunderhorn in 1808 . In 1818 the editors of the book Deutsche Lieder für Jung und Alt expanded the verse form of this text in order to be able to underlay the text with a folk tune. It is believed that this song Hey may have served as a model, as the stanza structure is largely the same and the first two lines of text are very similar. In Gottfried Wilhelm Fink's musical house treasure from 1843 the melody is printed with both texts. The melody, in turn , is borrowed from the soldiers' farewell song O du Deutschland, ich muss marschieren, published by Ludwig Erk and Wilhelm Irmer as “Soldiers song from the war years 1813–15”. August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben contradicts this dating , who testifies to having heard the song as early as 1809 on the occasion of the Napoleonic Wars , “when the Westphalians had to move to Spain. It also fits much more closely with the period 1809-12 than with the later, when the war was waged in the country itself ”. Ernst Moritz Arndt created a patriotic rewording of the soldier's song in 1815 .

Further settings of the text come from Lorenz Kraußold (1836), Friedrich Silcher (1841), Carl Gottlieb Reissiger (1841) and Carl Wilhelm Fliegel (1854).

reception

In his text “Er ist ein Pedant…” from the cycle Afterwards , Kurt Tucholsky uses the song to make fun of the idea of ​​God as a pedantic, all-counting accountant; at the same time he complains about the antiquated, solemn language of the poem.

Incidentally, there is an unromantic answer to the initial question of the song. So there are around 6500 stars that can be recognized with a clear view with the naked eye with an average of good eyesight (" clear-sighted " in the astronomical sense, size class over 6.8 mag). In the case of light pollution there are much less, in cities often none at all.

literature

Web links

Wikibooks: Songbook / Do you know how many little stars there are  - learning and teaching materials

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lutz Röhrich : riddle song. In: Rolf Wilhelm Brednich, Lutz Röhrich, Wolfgang Suppan (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Volkslieds. Volume 1. Wilhelm Fink, Munich 1973, pp. 205–233, here p. 231. Printed in: Lutz Röhrich: Gesammelte Schriften zur Volkslied- und Volksballadenforschung. Waxmann, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-8309-1213-7 , pp. 165–200, here p. 197 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  2. ↑ Evangelical hymn book. Edition for the Evangelical Lutheran Churches in Bavaria and Thuringia. 2nd Edition. Evangelical Press Association for Bavaria eV, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-583-12100-7 , p. 895.
  3. ↑ a b c Bernhard Leube: 511 - Do you know how many little stars there are . In: Gerhard Hahn , Jürgen Henkys (Hrsg.): Liederkunde zum Evangelisches Gesangbuch . No. 9 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-525-50332-6 , pp. 52–56 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  4. ^ Wilhelm Hey: Fifty more fables for children. Drawn in pictures by Otto Speckter. Along with a serious attachment. Harenbert, Dortmund 1978, ISBN 3-921846-52-8 , appendix p. 18 f. (Photomechanical reprint of the first edition by Friedrich Andreas Perthes, Gotha o. J. [1837]; cf. also the digitized version of the 1852 edition ).
  5. ^ Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann: The book of children's songs. Melody output with chord numbering (= SEM 8370). Schott, Mainz 2010, ISBN 978-3-254-08370-8 , p. 47.
  6. ↑ The statement that the text appeared in Wilhelm Hey's poems as early as 1816 (see: Gustav Mußmann, Anton Kippenberg, Friedrich Michael (ed.): When the grandfather took his grandmother. 5th edition. Insel, Leipzig 1922, p. 436 , Digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Dalsdergrossvater00leipuoft~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3D436~ double-sided%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D ) does not correspond to the facts.
  7. ↑ Later editions appeared with the name of the author, for example the edition from 1852 .
  8. ↑ These supplements are missing in the modern facsimile editions
  9. ↑ Achim von Arnim, Clemens Brentano: Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Volume 2. Heidelberg, 1808, p. 199 ( digitized version ).
  10. ^ Karl August Groos , Bernhard Klein : German songs for young and old. Realschulbuchhandlung, Berlin 1818, p. 19 ( digitized in the Google book search).
  11. ↑ Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Karl Hermann Prahl: Our folk songs. 4th edition. Engelmann, Leipzig 1900, p. 225 f. ( Digitized versionhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Dunserevolkstmli00unkngoog~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3Dn240~doppelseiten%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D ).
  12. ↑ Ludwig Erk , Franz Magnus Böhme : German song library . Volume 2. Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1893, p. 391 ( digitized versionhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Dbub_gb_dePoAAAAIAAJ~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3Dn399~double-sided%3Dja~LT%3D~PUR%3D ).
  13. ↑ Gottfried Wilhelm Fink: Musical treasure of the Germans. A collection of 1000 songs and chants with singing styles and piano accompaniment. Mayer and Wigand, Leipzig 1843, p. 16 ( digitized version ).
  14. ↑ Ludwig Erk, Wilhelm Irmer: The German folk songs with their ways of singing Volume 1, Issue 4. Plahn, Berlin 1839, p. 6 ( digitized ).
  15. ↑ August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben , Ernst Richter : Silesian folk songs with melodies. Collected from the mouth of the people. Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig 1842, p. 294 f. ( Digitized version ).
  16. ↑ Wolfgang Steinitz : German folk songs of a democratic character from six centuries. Volume 1. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1954, pp. 437-440.
  17. ↑ Ludwig Erk , Franz Magnus Böhme : German song library . Volume 3. Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1894, p. 244 f. ( Digitized versionhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Dbub_gb_NuwzAQAAMAAJ~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3Dn249~ double-sided%3Dja~LT%3D~PUR%3D ).
  18. ↑ O you Germany, I must march by Ernst Moritz Arndt , Northeimer database German poem
  19. ↑ Friedrich Silcher: Twelve children's songs from the appendix to Speckter's book of fables. The LiederNet Archive
  20. ↑ Do you know how many stars are The LiederNet Archive
  21. ↑ Kurt Tucholsky: "He is a pedant ..." In: Die Weltbühne October 20, 1925 ( online at Wikisource).
  22. ↑ International Dark-Sky Reserves ( Memento of the original from April 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , darksky.org, accessed online October 24, 2013 (link no longer available). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.darksky.org