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Climb Ev'ry Mountain

"Climb Ev'ry Mountain"
Song from The Sound of Music
Published 1959
Writer(s) Oscar Hammerstein II
Composer(s) Richard Rodgers
"Climb Ev'ry Mountain"
Climb Ev'ry Mountain.jpg
Single by Shirley Bassey
from the album Shirley Bassey
B-side "Reach for the Stars"
Released July 1960
Format 7" single
Recorded 1959
Length 3:10
Label Columbia
Writer(s) Rodgers and Hammerstein
Shirley Bassey singles chronology
"You'll Never Know"
(1961)
"Climb Ev'ry Mountain"
(1960)
"I'll Get By"
(1961)

"Climb Ev'ry Mountain" is a show tune from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music. It is sung at the close of the first act by the Mother Abbess. It is themed as an inspirational piece, to encourage people to take every step towards attaining their dreams.

This song shares inspirational overtones with the song "You'll Never Walk Alone" from Carousel. They are both sung by the female mentor characters in the shows, and are used to give strength to the protagonists in the story, and both are given powerful reprises at the end of their respective shows. As Oscar Hammerstein II was writing the lyrics, it developed its own inspirational overtones along the lines of an earlier Hammerstein song, "There's a Hill Beyond a Hill". He felt that the metaphors of climbing mountains and fording streams better fitted Maria's quest for her spiritual compass. The muse behind the song was Sister Gregory, the head of Drama at Rosary College in Illinois. The letters that she sent to Hammerstein and to Mary Martin, the first Maria von Trapp on Broadway, described the parallels between a nun's choice for a religious life and the choices that humans must make to find their purpose and direction in life. When she read the manuscript of the lyrics, she confessed that it "drove [her] to the Chapel" because the lyrics conveyed a "yearning that … ordinary souls feel but cannot communicate."

Although this song has parallels with "You'll Never Walk Alone," the song shares musical similarities with the song "Something Wonderful" from The King and I. Both songs are played at a similar broad tempo, and both songs have accompaniments punctuated by heavy chords in the orchestral score.


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