"Edelweiss" free arrangement

HarryLikas · 2025-07-09T17:44:36+00:00

I have arranged "Edelweiss" using a left-hand arpeggio style built from the notes of each chord. I've arranged over 1,200 piano arrangements and created 65 t...

thepianoplayer416

When the “Sound of Music” came out, my parents took me to see it. Around age 5 I wasn’t old enough to understand the story. Slept through parts of the movie. The only part I remembered was the Captain getting the chicken to line up to welcome Maria. In a well disciplined manner. None of the tunes stuck in my head until 2 decades later watching reruns.

I learned a few instruments in school playing mostly Classical music. I listened to the Tchaikovsky “Sleeping Beauty” Waltz from the Disney movie at a young age. The melodies from the S of M weren’t my cup of tea growing up.

There are many tunes considered popular classics in America but not in other parts of the world. Growing up in Asia, my exposure to American culture was limited. Once the family had American friends visiting for a week. They were watching “Star Trek” on TV. Don’t think anybody in the family follow the program in the ‘60s & ‘70s at all.

keystring

Nightowl They showed all the familiar mountain scenery and even included a goatherd standing there with goats! There was a picture of a red rose called Julie Andrews and several other obvious clues. It was just too easy! 😁

Thinking about this: These clues seem to be geared toward (old) popular American movies, more than familiarity with countries and culture. If I saw a goat with a goatherd, along with mountains, I'd be thinking Switzerland. Peter the goatherd becomes a good friend of Heidi and is a main character of the book. Plus the author belongs to the country. Julie Andrews would point to Austria, if you had watched the movie. Apparently the Edelweiss flower was also featured. But it is the national flower of Bulgaria, Austria, Slovenia, Switzerland, and Italy. So Edelweiss could also have pointed people to Switzerland. So is it geographic and cultural ignorance, or of an American movie? Greater geographic knowledge might actually hamper a contestant if that's the case.

Switzerland made me look up the old Ricola commercials. 😃

Nightowl

keystring Good points, keystring. 🙂 Some contestants did consider Switzerland before realising that the clues pointed to Austria, but then some of them guessed Vienna as the destination, due to the various Waltz clues. Their geographical/general knowledge exceeded their knowledge of the famous musical, whereas for a lifelong fan of the film like myself, it's probably the other way around! 😁 So I was having a laugh at their expense, because I don't really expect every Brit to have encyclopedic knowledge of the film (like me). 🙂

I remember watching the film Heidi as a young child and the mountain scenery is similar to the SoM.

thepianoplayer416 I guess the producers had an American audience in mind when they decided to use specially written songs to fit their (less than historically accurate) narrative. They probably thought that Austrian/German audiences would prefer the original German language film and it seems they were correct in this assumption.

I recently discovered another interesting fact about the VT family home - after they left Austria their house was confiscated by the Nazis and Himmler lived there! 😟 I found this thought horrifying and can imagine how much this fact must have upset the VT family.

thepianoplayer416

The producers of the original music could have ended the story with the family arriving on a ship into the New York harbour. After all, America is a great nation everybody dream of going to.

It’s ok to create catchy tunes from scratch for a Broadway musical. To represent a country where Haydn, Mozart & Beethoven wrote their masterpieces, need to include some of their music in the background. Even incorporating Australian folk tunes using English lyrics for an American audience.

WieWaldi

Nightowl They probably thought that Austrian/German audiences would prefer the original German language film and it seems they were correct in this assumption.

Oh my dear - this is so true.
German speaking folks just don't expect people to speak English in a movie that is obviously placed in their home region. It feels just wrong. In the beginning I always thought the Captain belonged to the Royal Navy. Furthermore I wondered, why a british officer lives in Austria near Salzburg. (I immediately recognized Salzburg from the opening scenes; it is such a beautiful town.)

Then there was the landler dance. It is some dance, but not a landler. It is not even landler music at all. The composers found out, a landler is a ¾ beat and made something with a ¾ beat. But it sounds more like a waltz. Landler music is very different.

But the most strange scene was Edelweiss. I instantly thought, why can Lisl step in and know the melody and the text of this song? Then I thought: Okay - it is the oldest child, maybe she learned it up from her mother and remembers. This was my explanation and I was fine with it.
Then Edelweiss came again, but now the entire crowd was singing along. What? Why does everybody know this song? It is a nice song, but it does not sound like a song from the Alps. Especially in the refrain, the 2nd word "Edelweiss" is delayed like a syncopation. Something like this isn't used in the Alps region. Believe me, I grew up in a household with parents listening to a lot of traditional and regional music.

Something else? Yes - Do-Re-Mi. Nobody in Germany or Austria knows about Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Si-La-Ti-Do. We have our own letters for music - we think B is an H. But B_b is named B. This is what I learned as a small kid and I thought: Easy - almost the alphabet. I didn't think about why there is an H between A and C; nor if it makes any sense. I just accepted it.
About proper names for notes I learned as adult a few years ago when I started piano. It was a no-brainer to prefer the English names instead of the German ones. And by diggin into this topic a bit, I found out that Italy and France use Do-Re-Mi, but no letters. Maybe the Swiss could know it, because there use 4 languages: German, French, Italian, Romansh. But Austrians and Bavarians? No - they don't know Do-Re-Mi.

Anyway, how the Alps (Austrian/Bavarian) culture is displayed in SoM, it is very weird for us. They sing about schnitzel with noodles. Nobody eats noodles together with schnitzel. The usual side dish to schnitzel is something made of potatoes, like fries, potatoe-salad or fried potatoes. Sometimes spätzle, but never noodles. NEVER. (it is like ice-cream with ketchup)

Maybe imagine watching a movie made in Germany, but it is about Texas. And imagine a scene with a wedding in a church. And then imagine, after the priest has finished the ceremony and the couple kisses, all guests grab their revolvers and shoot in the air. Yelling Yee-Hah. Not to mention, everyone is wearing a cowboy hat. 🤠 What else 😂

Nightowl

WieWaldi It's very enlightening to read things from the viewpoint of somebody who grew up in a place so close to the region where the the actual events took place. The more I think about it, the more absurd I think it is that this film was ever released in Austria or Germany - just what were the producers thinking of?!? No wonder it went down like a lead balloon in that part of Europe! Thanks to all German speaking members for all the detailed input about your culture and the reasons why the SoM was not popular in German speaking areas - I totally understand now.

We Brits really are very spoilt in the sense that English is so widely spoken around the world that we don't have much need to speak other languages, but I almost feel offended on your behalf about the wrong thinking behind some of the choices the producers made with this film. It's a shame because the soundtrack to the film is pretty special, in my view, but the lyrics of Edelweiss must seem absurd to you. Maybe just block out the horrible memory by listening to Climb Every Mountain - at least that song has a message that makes sense to people all over the world. 🙂

keystring

You've nailed the cultural aspect through your concrete examples.

Only, about Do Re Mi --- This is about movable Do solfege which is not about the name of pitches (C, D, E with the different of H and B in German, versus using Do Re Mi for those pitches in some languages.) I did a quick google search: It seems to be taught in Germany (I'd be surprised if it wasn't) because in one German language Reddit thread someone asks for resources for practising. - Then, there's the Deutsche Kodaly Gesellschaft - Kodaly was Hungarian. His method includes movable Do solfege.

Meanwhile the song itself is problematic for teaching movable do solfege, because in the middle of the song it slips out of the diatonic notes a few times In m. 11 there's the F#, and the Bb in m. 14. But above all, m. 13 - what they hey? We have the secondary dominant of E7 moving to Am, with the melody going along an E major scale. My teacher pointed it out to me. I was disconcerted because I'd been singing it since age 11 for decades just assuming it was all purely diatonic teaching solfege. When I started looking at it, I found more and more bugs in terms of teaching movable do solfege.

https://musescore.com/ken_madell/do-a-deer?srsltid=AfmBOoprAstukf79fanku3h6yeJTe7yjWJUGLZ9eA_506LJ8omWUJat6

WieWaldi

keystring I did a quick google search: It seems to be taught in Germany (I'd be surprised if it wasn't) because in one German language Reddit thread someone asks for resources for practising.

No. It is not.
Just because someone asks for resources doesn't mean it is taught in Germany. At least not taught commonly. But if someone wants to learn it because someone asks for it, nobody in Germany is stopping this.
Same concept as some Germans are learning Japanese and some Germans are asking about how to learn Japanese. But it doesn't mean Japanese is common in German.

WieWaldi

Nightowl The more I think about it, the more absurd I think it is that this film was ever released in Austria or Germany - just what were the producers thinking of?!?

The Trapps lived in Salzburg, so the producers shot the scenes around Salzburg.

Nightowl No wonder it went down like a lead balloon in that part of Europe!

I think in the German region, it was difficult. Because "Die Trapp Familie" was released 9 years earlier, it was in native German (and native Alps-dialect 😃). And it showed some differences in the story like different genders and names for the children. And no specatuclar escape from the 3rd Reich. Consider you have seen the earlier film, then go to the cinema and you realize: "Ok, this is different than what I remember, and this too, and this and this...". Then you check the facts and find out, the "differences" are "wrongs". Same for the used music and dances^^.

Nightowl We Brits really are very spoilt in the sense that English is so widely spoken around the world that we don't have much need to speak other languages, ...

This wasn't always the case. I think since 1990 the English language grew to a real world language. (Not just on paper.) The generation of my parents (about the age of the Trapp-children) hadn't learned English at all. Maybe in some schools, but for sure not the common people. And maybe some of the northern Germans spoke English. (In areas where people live closer to the UK.) And probably some of the seafarers.

Nightowl ...but I almost feel offended on your behalf about the wrong thinking behind some of the choices the producers made with this film.

No need to feel like this. I think SoM is a good movie for its own. It is a movie made out of a successful musical and it shares its music. The music itself is wonderful. Everything is good. It just didn't work in the German region.

It is like a man named Karl May wrote the novel "Winnetou", about an appache living in the wild west. Karl May never had left Europe in his life. Everything he knew about Indians came from books and maps. Nevertheless, this is what my parents generation learned about the wild west and how Indians lived. Very sterotype, very cliche. Should I be ashamed because of that? No, of course not!

Nightowl

WieWaldi The Trapps lived in Salzburg, so the producers shot the scenes around Salzburg.

Of course - at least they made the right decision there! Also, a huge tourist industry sprang up from the success of the film, so hoteliers and restaurateurs in Salzburg might feel pleased about that (although maybe some locals might not appreciate the coach loads of visitors at times).

I agree, the earlier film seems much closer to the true story and actually I think the thunder storm scene is much better - the song about the Horse is very cute and the scene is more low key and believable than the way it was done in SoM.

thepianoplayer416

I travelled to Salzburg, Vienna & other cities on a European tour in the 1980s. The main attractions included Beethoven Haus & Mozart Haus but not 1 mention of “Sound of Music”. A lot of Classical & folk music but not American show tunes made for Broadway. In Vienna we went to a garden where Johann Strauss waltzes were played all night. The Captain & Maria dancing to a waltz was the only thing that is authentic Austrian in the movie.

The American version of the von Trapp family was dramatized and created for an American audience. None of the songs originated from Austria.

It’s like the Puccini opera “Madam Butterfly”. The songs were not Japanese but the story shows elements of Japanese culture through the main characters. The Gilbert & Sullivan play “Mikado” which is the English way of making fun of the Japanese. Besides the Japanese style clothing, nothing in the play is authentic. A Japanese is more likely to see the Puccini opera than the G & S play.

Nightowl

thepianoplayer416 A huge tourist industry based on dedicated SoM tours has developed over the years, I think anyone visiting Salzburg during the summer now would find it hard to avoid seeing the tour buses with images of the film plastered along the sides.

Apparently the dance featured in the film was not authentic - see the various detailed posts from @WieWaldi which give a lot of interesting facts.

There is an expression that art reflects life, but there is also another expression - artistic licence. In the case of SoM, the latter expression sums up the situation, along with "never let the truth get in the way of a good story". 🙂

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