"Hearts and Flowers" is a song composed by Theodore Moses-Tobani (with words by Mary D. Brine) and published in 1893.
The famous melody is taken from the introductory 2/4 section of "Wintermärchen" Waltzes Op.366 (1891) by the Hungarian composer Alphons Czibulka.
The song as a vocal number was soon forgotten but the piece it was founded upon, re-arranged as a short instrumental, gained popularity in its own right under the same title "Hearts and Flowers" and it is in this form that it remains well known to this day.
The 2/4 melody Czibulka's "Wintermärchen" Waltzes Op.366 (1891) was also re-arranged into 3/4 time to form the first waltz in the instrumental-only "Hearts and Flowers" Waltzes by Moses-Tobani though this is now never heard.
Today the piece "Hearts and Flowers" has a connection in popular culture with having been associated with silent film accompaniment music. The connection is entirely a latter-day one however as silent film scores were typically assembled from music that specifically was unfamiliar to the audience so as to not distract attention from the on-screen action.
Nevertheless, the instrumental violin version has in the collective popular imagination come to symbolize all that is melodramatic, sentimental or mock-tragic. Indeed, the humming of the tune is often combined with the miming of violin-playing to indicate mock-sympathy at someone's misfortunes.
The term 'hearts-and-flowers' has entered the English language with the sense "extreme sentimentality, cloying sweetness".
Famous quotes containing the words hearts and/or flowers:
“I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“There is a close relationship between flowers and convicts. The fragility and delicacy of the former are of the same nature as the brutal insensitivity of the latter.”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)