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Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
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"Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" is one of the most popular English nursery rhymes. It combines the tune of the 1761 French melody ‘Ah! Vous dirai-je, Maman’ with an English poem, "The Star" by Jane Taylor. The poem, which is in couplet form, was first published in 1806 in Rhymes for the Nursery, a collection of poems by Taylor and her sister Ann. It is often sung to the tune of the French melody "Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman" (first published in 1761).
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Encyclopedia
"Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" is one of the most popular English nursery rhymes. It combines the tune of the 1761 French melody ‘Ah! Vous dirai-je, Maman’ with an English poem, "The Star" by Jane Taylor. The poem, which is in couplet form, was first published in 1806 in Rhymes for the Nursery, a collection of poems by Taylor and her sister Ann. It is often sung to the tune of the French melody "Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman" (first published in 1761). The English lyrics have five stanzas, although only the first is widely known. Mozart wrote twelve variations on ‘Ah! Vous dirai-je, Maman’.
Lyrics
The English lyrics have five verses. The repetition of the first two lines at the end of each verse is not in the original, but is needed to fit the usual melody. Below is the whole text, without the repetition of the first two lines added.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky!
When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.
Then the traveller in the dark,
Thanks you for your tiny spark,
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.
In the dark blue sky you keep,
And often through my curtains peep,
For you never shut your eye,
Till the sun is in the sky.
As your bright and tiny spark,
Lights the traveller in the dark,—
Though I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
Melody
Many think that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was the original composer of this melody, a misconception reinforced by its appearance as a "correct answer" in the original edition of Trivial Pursuit. However, Mozart wrote twelve variations for piano on the melody (Variations on "Ah vous dirai-je, Maman"), now catalogued as K. 265/300e in the Köchel-Verzeichnis.
Appearances of the melody
Many songs in various languages have been based on the "Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman" melody. In English, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" shares its melody with the "Alphabet Song" from 1834, and "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep".
The German Christmas carol "Morgen kommt der Weihnachtsmann", with words by Hoffmann von Fallersleben, also uses the melody, as does the Hungarian Christmas carol "Hull a pelyhes fehér hó", and the Dutch "Altijd is Kortjakje ziek".
Several classical compositions have been inspired by the tune:
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Variations on "Ah vous dirai-je, Maman" (K. 265 / K. 300e)
- Camille Saint-Saëns, Carnival of the Animals, 12th movement (Fossiles) quotes the tune
- Erno Dohnányi, Variations on a Nursery Tune
- Erwin Schulhoff, Ten Variations on 'Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman' and Fugue
- John Corigliano, The Mannheim Rocket
- Franz Liszt, Album Leaf: "Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman" (S.163b)
- Theodor von Schacht, 3rd movement (Allegretto con variazioni) of his clarinet concerto in B flat major
First appearances of the melody and the original French text version
The original French rhyme Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman, was far from a children's rhyme. Apparently it originated in the first half of the 18th century. As there was no published version of the text before 1774, several slightly differing versions of what could have been the "original" version exist:
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- , as published in the early 20th century in a collection of French songs by Jean Gilleguin.
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In these versions a girl confides a secret to her mother: that she has been seduced by "Silvandre". Only in one version cited above did the girl apparently make a narrow escape ("Je m'échappai par bonheur"), in the other versions the girl appears to have been "beaten" by L'Amour ("Love").
As for the history of the melody and the non-nursery rhyme version(s) of the French text:
- 1761: first publication of the music (without lyrics) of Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman in "Les Amusements d'une Heure et Demy" by Mr. Bouin (Paris), p. 1.
- Around 1765, the words and music appear in a manuscript entitled "Recueil de Chansons" under the title "Le Faux Pas", p. 43.
- 1774: earliest known printed publication of the lyrics together with the music in volume two of "Recueil de Romances" by M.D.L. (De Lusse) published in Brussels, under the title "La Confidence – Naive" (p. 75).
- Around 1780 (Paris): the words and music appear in sheet music under the title "Les Amours de Silvandre".
- 1785: First publication of Mozart's Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman variations.
As for the composition date of Mozart's Variations, for a time the variations were thought to have been composed in 1778, while Mozart stayed in Paris from April to September in that year, the assumption being that the melody of a French song could only have been picked up by Mozart while residing in France. For this presumed composition date, in the chronological catalogue of Mozart's compositions the composition was renumbered from K. 265 to K. 300e. Later analysis of Mozart's manuscript of the composition by Wolfgang Plath rather indicated 1781-1782 as the probable composition date.[Based on booklet notes by Robin Golding, 1991 for Daniel Barenboims Mozart: The Complete Piano Sonatas and Variations, EMI Classics 8 CD box No. 5 73915 2]
French "nursery rhyme" version
Origin unknown.
| French lyrics | English translation |
|---|
Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman,
Ce qui cause mon tourment.
Papa veut que je raisonne,
Comme une grande personne.
Moi, je dis que les bonbons
Valent mieux que la raison. |
Ah! I shall tell you, mum,
What causes my torment.
Papa wants me to reason
Like an adult.
I say that candy
Is better than being right. |
The French "nursery rhyme" version also appears with slight variations:
| French lyrics | English translation |
|---|
| A variation |
|---|
Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman,
ce qui cause mon tourment.
Papa veut que je demande
de la soupe et de la viande...
Moi, je dis que les bonbons
valent mieux que les mignons. |
Ah! I would tell you, Mother,
what causes my torment.
father wants me to ask
for soup and for meat
I say that candy
is better than lovers. | | Another variation |
|---|
Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman,
ce qui cause mon tourment
Papa veut que je retienne
des verbes la longue antienne...
Moi, je dis que les bonbons
valent mieux que les leçons. |
Ah! I shall tell you, Mother,
what causes my torment.
father wants me to remember
This catalogue of verbs conjugations
I say that candy
is better than lessons. |
Other text versions
The song is a popular target for parodies. "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat," a parody of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" recited by the Mad Hatter during the mad tea-party, in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It reads:
- Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
- How I wonder what you're at!
- Up above the world you fly,
- Like a tea tray in the sky.
- Twinkle, twinkle—
The Mad Hatter is interrupted in his recitation. "The Bat" was the nickname of Professor Bartholomew Price, one of the Dons at Oxford, a former teacher of Carroll's and well known to the Liddell family. It is one of the few parodies in the Alice books of which the original is still widely known.
A Latin translation appears in Mary Mapes Dodge's When life is young (1894):
- Mica, mica, parva stella,
- Miror quaenam sis tam bella.
- Super terra in caelo,
- Alba gemma splendido.
- Mica, mica, parva stella,
- Miror quaenam sis tam bella.
In A Space Child's Mother Goose (first printed in 1958, now available in a 2001 edition ISBN 978-1-930900-07-3) there's a more erudite version:
- Scintillate scintillate asteroid minific,
- Fain would I ponder thy nature specific,
- Loftily perched in the ether capacious,
- Strongly resembling a gem, carbonaceous.
The Elegants released a single adapted from this song called Little Star, which made #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1958.
An anonymous astronomy parody, quoted in Violent Universe by Nigel Calder (BBC, 1969), refers to pulsars and quasars. A different version of this parody attributed to George Gamow and Nigel Calder was published in Galaxies in the Universe: An Introduction by Linda Sparke and John Gallagher (Cambridge University Press, 2000 - ISBN 0-521-59740-4).
The Girl Scouts of the USA placed a full page ad in the March 19th 2006 New York Times containing a of the rhyme that was "resung by science" as part of their "Girls Go Tech" campaign.
Vashti Bunyan, an English singer-songwriter, composed "Lily Pond" based on this tune. It can be found on her 1970 album Just Another Diamond Day. American singer Elizabeth Mitchell (musician) covers the song on her 2006 album You Are My Little Bird.
In the movie Death Becomes Her, actress Madeline Ashton (portrayed by Meryl Streep) miserably looks at her ageing face in the mirror and sings:
- Wrinkled wrinkled little star
- Hope they'll never see the scars!
External links
- A European Union, government funded, education project to collect lullabies (in their native language) from across Europe - includes samples in 7 languages.
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- BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour article (with audio): http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/04/2006_35_wed.shtml
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