My aunt was called very early in the morning after working a 12 hour night shift. She just got to bed whe na radio station called her and asked who wrote the song “Twinkle twinkle little star.” She didn’t know the answer and they asked for a different person so they had the wrong number. They gave her a chance anyway, but she didn’t know so they gave her a T-shirt. So does anyone know who wrote the song?
Mozart wrote the melody. Don’t know about the words.
Did he? I thought he did a variation on it and the actual melody was a lot older.
Also in yojimbo’s link, Jill says states that the melody was around before Mozart:
General Questions.
This is weird. It’s one of the questions in a quiz that the paper I work on is setting this week!
Jane Taylor is the answer.
We got a book of the children’s songs and at least one out of three are set to this tune. Jane Taylor probably wrote the poem, but that is not the same as writing a song. Otherwise The Byrds’ would get no credit for “Turn, Turn, Turn”
Also, this link states that the tune was first published in 1761 in France but goes on to say that no one is sure of its exact origins. I would say that the correct answer to who wrote it is, “We don’t know.”
The Byrds don’t get credit for “Turn! Turn! Turn!” It was Pete Seeger who set that to music.
Didn’t he play tamberine on that song? Therefore he was one of the Byrds and I am still right.
Just kidding.
OK, so I didn’t look up authorship I just remembered who made a hit out of it. You get the point anyway. Lyracists doesn’t write songs. They write words. It takes a melody to make a song.
BTW: What exactly is an Elephant Shrew?
(I know what a biffy is.)
An obviously derivative poem by Lewis Carroll:
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you’re at!
Up above the world you fly,
Like a teatray in the sky.
From Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1866)
One of a family of small African insectivorous mammals. Here are some pictures.
Okay, here is another answer.
If you ever heard the Elegants’ song titled “Little Star” from 1958, http://www.elyrics4u.com/l/little_star_the_elegants.htm
it is a variation on the words and music of the song we are discussing.
In that case the answer is Vito Picone and Arthur Venosa.
Incidenatally, that site gives Mozart credit for the original. Then again, it just might be perpetuating the Urban Legend.
Mozart did not write the tune. The tune is an old French folk song called “Ah vous dirais’je maman”. Joseph Haydn used it as well in his second movement to the Symphony # 93 (aka “Surprise Symphony”) also as a set of variations.
K364 is dead on.
Mozart wrote a set of 12 variations on the theme, which is indeed “Ah! vous dirais-je maman”, a french folk song. Some old copies of this piece was actually labelled with the french title. (variations on…)
Interestingly, another french folksong, “Quand trois poules vont au champ”, with the same tune, dates to the 18th century.
Papa Haydn wrote this tune
And a chord is coming soon
It will be a big surprise
Open sleepy eyes…BOMP!
(K364, is your handle a Köchel number?)
Sinfonia concertante in E flat major, K. 364 for violin, viola and orchestra. Hmm… Is it time for viola jokes?
Very astute Biffy and Riv.
No. A viola joke would be the last thing that comes to mind when listening to K364 (the work, not me!)
Not just some old copies - I’ve always known that piece as “variations on ‘Ah! vous dirais-je maman.’” As a matter of fact, that’s how it’s refered to on my score.
I tried finding out about where and when the song originated, but I haven’t been lucky. The original lyrics go:
Ah! vous dirais-je maman
Ce qui cause mon tourment
Papa veut que je raisonne
Comme une grande personne
Moi, je dis que les bonbons
Valent bien mieux que la raison
(Oh, mommy let me tell you
What causes my torment (grief)
Daddy wants me to reason
Like a grown up person
Me, I say that candies
Are much better than reason)
Back to the OP … when I was a child my great-grandparents lived opposite this house in Shilling Street, Lavenham, Suffolk where Jane Taylor lived, and wrote the first verse.
I used to love gazing up at that little window … 