My Favorite Things (song)

"My Favorite Things"
Song
Published	1959
Composer(s)	Richard Rodgers
Lyricist(s)	Oscar Hammerstein II
Language	English

"My Favorite Things" is a 1959 song, originally from the Rodgers and Hammerstein, musical The Sound of Music.

The song was first performed by Maria (played by Mary Martin) and Mother Abbess (Patricia Neway) in the original 1959 Broadway production.

Julie Andrews performed the song for the first time on the Christmas special for The Garry Moore Show in 1961, and then she starred in the 1965 film.

In the musical, the lyrics to the song are a reference to things Maria loves, such as "whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens". These are the things she selects to fill her mind with when times are bad.

The original Broadway musical places this song in the Mother Abbess's office, just before she sends Maria to serve Captain von Trapp's family as governess to his seven children. However, Ernest Lehman, the screenwriter for the film adaptation, re-positioned this song so that Maria would sing it with the children during the thunderstorm scene in her bedroom, replacing "The Lonely Goatherd", which had originally been sung at this point. Many stage productions also make this change, shifting "The Lonely Goatherd" to another scene.

The first section of the melody has the distinctive property of using only the notes 1, 2, and 5 (tonic, supertonic, and dominant) of the scale. By using the same melody-pattern, Rodgers harmonized it differently in different stanzas, using a series of minor triads one time and major triads the next.

The song ends with a borrowed line of lyric and notes from Rodgers' earlier composition with Lorenz Hart, "Glad to Be Unhappy", a standard about finding peace in the midst of unrequited love. Using the same two notes for the phrasing of "so sad" in the original song, Rodgers brings the gloom of my "Favorite Things" to a similar upbeat ending – "and then I don't feel so bad."

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