Tag Archives: Children

Frère Jacques

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FrereJacquesSm

Frère Jacques, frère Jacques,
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?
Sonnez les matines! Sonnez les matines!
Ding, daing, dong. Ding, daing, dong.

Frère Jacques is a French nursery melody. In English, it is sometimes called “Are You Sleeping?,” or “Brother John”. The tune is one of the most basic repeating canons along with the melody of “Three Blind Mice”. It bears a resemblance to the piece Toccate d’intavolatura, No.14, Capriccio Fra Jacopino sopra L’Aria Di Ruggiero composed by Girolamo Frescobaldi, which was first published around 1615. “Fra Jacopino” is one potential Italian translation for “Frère Jacques”. The exact origins of the melody are unknown.

See a list of other potential traditional song themes here.

Videos:
Anders Bondeman – Improvisation Frere Jacques – Stockholm City Hall Organ
Xaver Varnus – Variations on Frère Jacques – Dominican Church, Budapest
Andrea Kumpe, Max Pöllner & Christian Kohler – Six Handed Improvisation on Frère Jacques – Pfarrkirche St. Nikolaus, Immenstadt

Old MacDonald Had a Farm

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OldMacDonald A children’s song and nursery rhyme about a farmer named MacDonald and the various animals he keeps on his farm. Each verse of the song changes the name of the animal and its respective noise. In many versions, the song is cumulative, with the noises from all the earlier verses added to each subsequent verse. It appears to date from the late nineteenth or early twentieth century with several different variants and has subsequently been translated and adapted into many different languages including Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, Hebrew, Japanese, and Korean.

See a list of other potential traditional song themes here.

Videos:
David Briggs – Prelude, Adagio and Variations on ‘Old MacDonald had a farm’ – Gloucester cathedral, Part I
David Briggs – Prelude, Adagio and Variations on ‘Old MacDonald had a farm’ – Gloucester cathedral, Part II
David Briggs – Prelude, Adagio and Variations on ‘Old MacDonald had a farm’ – Gloucester cathedral, Part III

Traditional songs

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Popular songs are frequent themes for concert improvisations, usually giving rise to a set of theme and variations, though occasionally being used in other forms. As the melody is usually very familiar to the audience (i.e. popular), it is generally easier for the people to follow and understand the development of the theme when well presented.

Example songs:

Recordings:

Franz Lehrndorfer
Theme & Variations, Vol. 1: Improvisations on Children’s Songs

Videos:
Olivier Latry – Improvisation on The Simpsons Theme – Toronto
Pierre Pincemaille – Theme and Variations on a popular tune – St Martin de Dudelange – Luxembourg
Olivier Latry, Vincent Dubois, Paolo Oreni and Michael Bottenhorn – Happy Birthday – St. Joseph, Bonn Beuel