After the big success of the Nursery Rhyme Collection in England producer and arranger Ian Watts and his German co-arranger Mike Wilbury decided to launch a similar project with traditional German Songs. Most tunes came up centuries ago but some tracks are actually brand new, exclusively written for this collection.
Oh, du lieber Augustin |
Oh, You Dear Augustin |
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1. Oh, du lieber Augustin, |
1. Oh, you dear Augustin, |
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Background notesThe melody sounds familiar to English people because it's also used for the English Tommy Tucker rhyme. The German version refers to a real person who lived in Vienna, Austria: Markus Augustin (1643 – 1685). He was very popular because he made the people laugh around a time when the pest desease raged in Vienna. He was kind of an early comedian, singing in bars. But very rarely he managed to get any money out of any bar because he spent it on wine whilst earning it. One evening, during the pest disease 1679, he was so drunk that he fell asleep in a roadside ditch. People thought he was dead and threw him on a carriage with dead bodies. However, he managed to awake before getting buried alive. He survived and people thought that wine actually helps to outplay the pest. Augustin wrote a song about his own misfortune and it is said that this song was the first version of the song “Oh du lieber Augustin” as we know today. |
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