Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2016 May 14

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May 14

Five songs to compare the history of

1. Alouette
2. Down by the Station
3. Eensy Weensy Spider
4. Little Bunny Foo Foo
5. Sweetly Sings the Donkey

All 5 of these songs start with the same group of notes. Is there any real relationship among the songs' tunes?? (Feel free to add a sixth song if possible.) Georgia guy (talk) 15:15, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

They're all more or less the same tune, a fairly simple one based on the major scale. Here's a piano tutorial showing how to play "Sweetly Sings the Donkey", which you'll see only uses the white notes, since it's being played in C major. --Nicknack009 (talk) 16:18, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Here's some sheet music: Alouette Down by the Station, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Little Bunny Foo Foo, Sweetly Sings the Donkey. They look more rhythmically different than they really are, because of notes inégales.

They are similar enough that it seems unlikely to be coincidence, but I can't find any discussion of it. Borrowing of folk tunes is common, but that doesn't prove it happened here. Alouette (song) mentions another song with that tune named "If You Love Me", but there is no citation and I can't find it online. Itsy Bitsy Spider says "The song is sung by and for children in countless languages and cultures", and mentions de:Spannenlanger Hansel. -- BenRG (talk) 20:31, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

I first heard Little Bunny Foo Foo as a Scout campfire song in the 1980s, so if I'm right, it's a comparatively recent entry to the list. Our article states: "The poem is sung to the tune of "Down by the Station" (1948), and melodically similar to the popular French Canadian children's song "Alouette" (1879)". Alansplodge (talk) 08:33, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

FWIW "Underneath the Spreading Chestnut Tree" is also very similar.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:04, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

I am not particularly surprised. There are only so many permutations of the notes of the tonic triad (that help to establish the key) that it would seem that such a resemblance would be quite likely, and the simple sequential treatment of the third outlined by the first bar is also not hard to reinvent. Why, Mozart did something quite similar in the String Quartet in C, KV 157:

Double sharp (talk) 09:29, 15 May 2016 (UTC)