Music
In the nineteenth century, most sources for the lyrics do not include music, and those that do often include music different from what has become the standard melody. Cecil Sharp's Folk Songs from Somerset (1905) contains two different melodies for the song, both distinct from the now-standard melody.
In 1909, English composer Frederic Austin wrote an arrangement, published by Novello & Co., in which he added, to a traditional melody, his own 2-bar motif for "Five gold rings". The melody from Austin's arrangement has since become standard. Austin's was also one of the earliest, and possibly the earliest, to substitute "Four calling birds" for the earlier "Colly birds".
Read more about this topic: The Twelve Days Of Christmas (song)
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches,—at least in midsummer, when the weather is serene; their sunny lives on the sand, amid the beach-grass and bayberries, their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of driftwood or a few beach plums, and their music the surf and the peep of the beech-bird.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Music is spiritual. The music business is not.”
—Van Morrison (b. 1945)
“Yankee Doodle, keep it up,
Yankee Doodle, dandy,
Mind the music and the step,
And with the girls be handy.”
—Richard Shuckburg (1756–1818)