An earlier (now forgotten) contrapuntal version may have existed and Mozart may have known about it. That the tune can be played in imitative counterpoint as a canon suggests that the music may be much older than Biado’s madrigal.While this in and of itself doesn’t immediately seem to point to La Mantovana, it is interesting that the tune lends itself to being played or sung by several independent voices, in a type of musical chase similar to “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” Variation 11 (Adagio) begins with contrapuntal imitation.Listen to Fuggi, fuggi, fuggi and you will hear a similar melodic embellishments at the ends of the phrases. Stylistically, the trill and dotted-eighth-sixteenth at the end of Mozart’s A section’s phrase resemble a vocal flourish reminiscent of Renaissance vocal music.Instead, in that spot (the fourth measure), Mozart’s Theme has repeated notes, the rhythm that accompanies Fuggi, fuggi, fuggi‘s Italian word, “ cielo”. The sung phrase, “ Ah! vous dirai-je, maman,” settles on the final syllable of maman with a held note ( half note). The rhythm of Mozart’s opening melody is not entirely that of the French folk song.Interestingly, Mozart’s repeat of the opening A section hearkens back to the structure of La Mantovana. Whereas the lyrics of the folk song do not repeat, Mozart has chosen to include repeats which lengthen the music into AABABA. The structure does not reflect the straightforward ABA form or lyrics of Ah! vous dirai-je, maman.Here are some features of Mozart’s variations that indicate a double influence of both Ah! vous dirai-je, maman and La Mantovana: Julie Andrews sings the original French lyrics: You can find the original French lyrics and English translation on Wikipedia in the section “ La Confidence naïve“. While most people believe that Ah! vous dirai-je, maman was a children’s song, the original version was about the torment a young adult was experiencing from their lover. The lyrics open with, “Ah ! vous dirai-je, maman, / Ce qui cause mon tourment?”. The first time the lyrics and music were published together was in Brussels in 1774, in volume two of Recueil de Romances. The fact that the lyrics were put into print this early suggests that the tune was also being sung in the early part of the 18th Century. The lyrics were used again in 1745 at the Comédie Italienne in the play Les Folies de Coraline. French composer and folklorist Jean-Baptiste Weckerlin claimed that the earliest appearance of the words was in 1740, though he didn’t specify where. This marks the region where our migrant tune first began to evolve many years earlier in melody and form into the simpler folk tune. It may be significant that it was in Brussels, Belgium that Ah! vous dirai-je, maman first appeared in print with music and lyrics together, in 1774. This Belgian variant likely circled the noted geographic regions, becoming major then increasingly simplified as it was passed orally person-to-person and adapted to different languages and lyrics by folk musicians.īy about 1750 when the music was written down as Burlesquein the Holy Roman Empire (present day Germany), the Dorian mode intervals of the original B section were melded together with the scale degrees used in Ik zag Cecilia komen‘s couplet into two short repeated phrases that were nearly exactly what the folk tune’s B section was to become. Also notable is the fact that Ik zag Cecilia komen was the only known 17th Century version to shed the repeat of the first A section, already making the transition to the folk tune’s structure ABA.
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