Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2014 March 28

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March 28

Origin of the song "vierzehn englein"

The song "vierzehn englein" appears in Humperdinck's Hansel und Gretel. Was this it's first appearance, or did it already exist as a traditional song?

This is the webpage you need to see. It explains that Humperdinck wrote the song itself, but the page and links there will give you the Catholic theology behind it. --TammyMoet (talk) 10:35, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

I did find some stuff referring to older songs on which Humperdinck's sister Adelheid Wette based her text. For example, a very similar text appeared in Johann Lewalter's collection of children songs in Kassel, Deutsches Kinderlied und Kinderspiel. In Kassel aus Kindermund in Wort und Weise in 1911 [1] (after Humperdinck's opera became famous, it has to be pointed out). The original title was "Abends wenn ich schlafen geh'" instead of Wette's "Abends will ich schlafen gehn".

This Zeit article too says that Wette based her lyrics on an older poem titled "Abends wenn ich schlafen geh" published in Des Knaben Wunderhorn (which would have been long before H&G), but it only quotes Wette's text, and I couldn't find anything similar in DKW, though I did find "des Abends wenn ich schlafen geh" as part of different poems which weren't about angels (one famous example was set to music by Mahler in the first song of Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen). ---Sluzzelin talk 22:20, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Aha, I did finally find it. It was published in the third volume of Des Knaben Wunderhorn, 1805 (see German Gutenberg) where it is titled "Abendgebet" ("Evening Prayer"). ---Sluzzelin talk 00:20, 29 March 2014 (UTC)