SONGS OF TWO WARS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 16, 13 October 1939, Page 8

SONGS OF TWO WARS

"Hymn of Hate" to "Boomps-a-Daisy"

ARCHING through France singing the old favourite "Tipperary" and two songs of later vintage: "Ole Faithful" and " Boomps-a-Daisy," the British Expeditionary Force has had a rapturous welcome from the French people. The cables tell us that the Tommies were "assisted" in their songs by the throngs which marched with them. The story of how "Tipperary" became an established favourite during the last war has been told many times and its repetition is hardly necessary. In the case of "Ole Faithful," this song is one of Jimmy Kennedy’s greatest successes and is most popular with radio listeners. Jimmy Kennedy also wrote "Roll Along Covered Wagon," "The Isle of Capri," "Play to Me, Gipsy," "Red Sails in the Sunset" and "Cafe Continental." Irishman and Linquist Kennedy, who was born in County Tyrone in 1902, is a Bachelor of Arts of Trinity College, Dublin, and an expert linguist. He is devoted to his hobbies of gardening, motoring, and golf, and lives at Walton-on-Thames. He is an authority on Western fiction. His library contains six or seven hundred books of this type, and he has read them all. The explanation is that one day he will have a ranch in Western Canada. Even as a schoolmaster, when he taught languages before writing best sellers, he began saving to start a ranch in a small way. Now, his plans are more elaborate. The ranch is an ambition which he had long before he began writing songs, but it has still to be realised. Exports " Hill-Billies " That is why he writes so many "hillbillies" and exports them to the United States. Once when tuning into America on short wave, he heard a rodeo in Nevada using his "Roll Along, Covered Wagon" as its signature tune. What a thrill! Jimmy Kennedy must be unique among composers, for when he is not writing music himself, he is providing lyrics for the music of others. One of the distinguished people with whom he collaborated in this strange fashion was her late Majesty Queen Liliuokalani of the Hawaiians. Liliuokalani, first Regent, and later Queen of Hawaii in 1887, made music her hobby, and composed many of those typical airs with which the strummers strive to enchant us to-day. Mr.. Kennedy plays airs over on the piano, waits for an inspiration, and then writes suitable words. Together with Michael Carr, his collaborator in "Ole Faithful," Kennedy is proving the most formidable problem to American

Boomps-A-Daisy "Boomps-a-Daisy" is Annette Mills’s latest popular dance success, and was written last February. As recently as the end of July she. said that it was very popular with the Services, who among countless other radio listeners, have tuned in, learned the words, learned the tune, and learned the steps of this most recent ball-room favourite. Little wonder the Tommies sang it marching through France. That a woman should be the composer and lyric writer of one of the "hits" with the British troops at the outset of the Nazi war is significant. Three Further " Hits " Latest advices from England make mention of three other songs that have made a big hit with the soldiers. The first is "Beer Barrel Polka." This song is written in common time, and has recently been an enormous seller in both England and America. As the rhythm is particularly suited to military marching, it is predicted that this will be one of the outstanding War Songs of the year. The words have a strong appeal to the soldier:Roll out the Barrel, We'll have a barrel of fun. Then there’s "South of the Border," in Tango Rhythm, which is also enjoying a huge vogue. Soldiers are singing it, everybody is humming or whistling it in the

streets, and it is featured by every top line act. Gene Autry recently arrived in London with "his horses and everything," and: the song simply "made" his personal appearances, Gene Autry was brought up on_his father’s ranch, took a railway job, then began song writing. His theatrical career started in radio, and this led to film work, since when he has risen to stardom. An American publisher was so impressed with "South of the Border" that he took it back home to introduce it there. Another new English wartime song is "Handsome Territorial," which is fast claiming public attention. This is after the type of the "Good-bye Dolly Gray" of the Boer War, and "If You Were the Only Girl in the World" of the Great War. It is a new dance in six-eight time (which makes it excellent for marching) and the actions of the dance include saluting and other soldier actions. German Songs The two main German soldier songs are "Deutschland uber Alles" and the "Horst Wessel" song. The tune of the former has a history. The famous "Emperor" String Quartet of Joseph Haydn was composed at the instigation of Count von Saurau, Imperial Chancellor and Minister of the Interior. _ The Count writing in 1820, said: "I often regretted that we had not, like the English, a national air calculated to display to all the world the loyal devotion of our people to the kind and upright ruler of our Fatherland...I caused that meritorious. poet Haschka to write the words and applied to our immortal countryman Haydn to set the music, for I considered him alone capable of writing anything approaching the English ‘God Save the King.’ Such was the origin of our National Hymn. * The national air, which was fashioned from a Croatian peasant tune, is used by Haydn in the second movement of the "Emperor" Quartet, hence its title. Upon it are built a set of variations. Haydn was particularly fond of the melody. The Emperor was enchanted with the air when it was sung on his birthday in 1797 ‘at the National Theatre in Vienna. His Majesty sent Haydn a gold box adorned with a facsimile of the Royal features as a special mark of appreciation for his composition. Five days before Haydn died he was carried to his pianoforte for the last time and solemnly played the Emperors Hymn .

to his assembled friends. It is sad to have to add that Napoleon’s cannon shattered the peace of ‘his last days; but when he died on May 31, French officers mingled with the Viennese at his funeral. An English Hymn Tune This fine tune has found its way into the hymn books of the English speaking countries, and "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken" can never be associated with any other setting than the Austrian hymn. Many will also have happy schoolday memories of it as the music of the "End-of-Term" hymn, "Lord, Dismiss Us With Thy Blessing"and not such happy memories of it as the "Beginning-of-Term" hymn as well. Not every radio listener is an admirer of this tune. When the Shadwick Quartet broadcast the "Emperor" Quartet for the BBC, one irate listener sent an angry postcard to Joseph Shadwick, leader of the Quartet. "Why go and spoil the whole programme with the nauseating Deutschland uber Alles? Chuck the beastly thing in the fire! God Save the King, and long live the Union Jack!" Germany appropriated a fine tune, and to it Hoffman von Fallersleben wrote the words beginning "Germany, Germany over all, over all in the world!" This song was sung by the Germans during the World War. Hymn of Hate They also sang the "Hymn of Hate," but

that has died a natural death. Anything with these words couldn’t last: French and Russian they matter not, A blow for a blow and a shot for a shot, We love them not, We hate them not; We hold the Weichsel and Vosges gate, We have but one and only hate; We love as one, we hate as one, We have one foe and one alone, England! etc., etc. This "Hymn of Hate" rather amused the British in the last war and many remember the comic picture in "Punch" depicting a typical German family having its morning hate. Then there is the story of the captured German submarine’s crew being done the honours on a British war ship. When the

senior officer among the Germans asked if there was nothing they could do to show their gratitude for the splendid treatment they had received, a very Junior British officer replied: "Too right. Sing us ‘The Hymn of Hate’ and let’s hear how it goes!" " Horst Wessel " Song The custom to-day is to follow up the official anthem with the "Horst Wessel Lied," sung with the right arm outstretched. The text and music are by Horst Wessel who was shot in a Communist brawl. Horst Wessel himself was just a brawler, but his life had an "average Nazi" quality that posthumously won him Adolf Hitler’s attention. His family was well-to-do, his father a wellknown minister in a _ Berlin slum, and a friend of Hindenberg. Young Horst prowled the sinister streets behind his father’s church, and early in his teens proved that he couid outbrawl the slum children. As a law student at the University of Berlin, he joined the Normannia student corps, then a monarchist group, the Bismark League, then something

called the Viking League that encouraged pugnacity. Finally, in 1926, at the age of 19, he discovered the Nazis. With an incredible appetite for trouble, he chose to be a Nazi Storm Trooper in Berlin’s great communist stronghold among the East Berlin tenements. He was mortally shot one night in January, 1930, by a Communist boxer, named Ali Hoehler. The Nazi Government executed two accessories to the crime and Hoehler died mysteriously in prison. Horst Wessel died in the Friedrichshain Hospital six weeks after he was shot. He died after he had refused the services of a Jewish doctor. The room in which he breathed his last is now a shrine-the bed curtains a laurel wreath and a Nazi flag is draped over it. A small bust of the hero stands on a pedestal nearby. A painting of Adolf Hitler hangs over the bed.

The music of "Horst Wessel" is in march time, and shows up very badly coming after Haydn’s tune. It is claimed that the air is an old Bavarian folk tune, but this is doubtful. It is the sort of unoriginal tune an amateur, in a moment of enthusiasm, might finger out on the piano. It just runs along and does what one expects it to do, and is, therefore, easily learned by the majority. After Horst Wessel’s death, the song was seized on and "plugged" by Dr. Goebbels, and thus Horst Wessel became the first Nazi-martyr. A German Tipperary It is claimed that the tune to other words, was used as a marching song during the Great War-a kind of German " Tipperary." A German naval officer once said that it was much sung by sailors at Kiel in 1916 to a set of verses commemorating the exploit of British efforts to dislodge her from the Rufiji River in the Tanganyika Territory, East Africa. The English words of " Horst Wessel" are: Their waving flag ’mid serried ranks of manhood, The Storm Troops march with gallant step, heads high, And comrades whom Reaction and Red Front have slaughtered, In spirit march with us and ne’er shall die. For Brown battalions clear the streets of others, Clear us a way and each Storm Trooper cheer, The Swastika brings hope to all our myriad brothers, The Day of Freedom and of Bread is here! For the last time Reveille has been sounded, For battle see us stand in stern array. Soon Hitler’s flag shall wave o’er every street unchallenged, And Serfdom’s days are doomed to pass away. One doesn’t hear much about "The Watch on the Rhine" these days, but the other two songs are very much in evidence. Only Tommy Atkins is really modern. He is the one soldier who is frankly and for all time bored by mcdern. war.