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Still Nacht, heilige Nacht
Hi Mona & Lisa. You’ve probably got your setlist for the Christmas livestream figured out and rehearsed. But, just in case … I was listening just now to your Christmas CD and noticed you did “Leise rieselt der Schnee” in the first part of “Snow Falls Softly At Night”.
It set me thinking that it would be brilliant if you could do Silent Night in the original German – it’s one of my favourite Christmas songs and the German lyrics bring an extra dimension of tranquility (even to those who don’t know the language).
Stay warm and stay groovy!
Stuart in Oxford
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8 Replies
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Yes. I agree, Stuart. In fact, I’d love you two to do what I believe is the original version: soprano and alto accompanied by guitar. Auf deutsch.
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This get my vote as well.
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A very nice idea, Stuart. I would also like that very much. Unfortunately, some songs lose their charm when translated. Regardless of the language in which they were originally created.
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When I was a young lad in school, we learned “Oh Tannanbaum” for a school pageant. I have sadly forgotten most of the words over time. I was just thinking of it yesterday and came across this thread when I logged in. We had a German family that moved into town the previous summer so one of the girls helped us with the lyrics. I’m sure we still butchered some of the pronunciations but we got it done.
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Yeah, singing „Oh Tannenbaum“, hard stuff Daryl :-). Did you learn German during your schooltime, or why was this song chosen for the Christmas performance? Mark Twain, who is said to have spoken German well, was not particularly enthusiastic about the German language. He humorously suggested that a talented person could learn English in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. I have to contradict him: it only took me twenty years…
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This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Jürgen Bereit.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by
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The pageant was supposed to be “Christmas Around the World” so we sang songs in many different languages (just the songs), other than a minimal required bit of French, we didn’t actually learn any other languages in school back then.
I spoke French at a very young age due to my maternal Grandmother being Parisian French, but she passed when I was only 8 so until high school I never kept it up. I am far from fluent any longer, but I can understand it well enough to get by in French speaking locations and I can still read it fairly well.
I do understand and speak some Japanese, kind of enough to get embarrassed in Japan when I was there. It kind of goes hand in hand with me being a karate practitioner/instructor. But I cannot read the kanji or any of the three forms of the written language at all. It is very difficult, at least for me. I always thought I would like to learn Japanese calligraphy but with no instructor available locally I didn’t get very far with it.
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Daryl,
it is too hard to retain a language without steady use.
I am very sympathetic.
Cheers -
I first encountered Oh Tannenbaum as a kid when it was sung by the title characters on the TV sitcom Laverne and Shirley. They gave that word an extremely American pronunciation, so I was sure they were singing “oh cannonball”.
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