The Lonely Goatherd

"The Lonely Goatherd"
Song from The Sound of Music
Published	1959
Writer(s)	Oscar Hammerstein II
Composer(s)	Richard Rodgers

"The Lonely Goatherd" is a popular show tune from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music that makes use of yodeling.

The song is well known for its examples of yodeling, a part of the traditional music of the Austrian Alps, where the musical is set.

This song tells the whimsical story of a goatherd whose yodelling is heard from far off and by passers-by, until he falls in love with a girl who wears a pale-pink coat, with her mother joining in the yodelling. The original 1959 musical has this as the song Maria (played by Mary Martin) sings to comfort the Von Trapp children during a storm.

For the 1965 film adaptation, screenwriter Ernest Lehman repositioned this song to a later part of the film wherein Maria (played by Julie Andrews) and the children sing it as part of a marionette show they perform for their father.The song in place of "The Lonely Goatherd" was "My Favorite Things", which was originally sung earlier in the original musical at the office of the Mother Abbess as a duet between her and Maria, just before she gets sent to serve Captain von Trapp's family as governess to his seven children.

While many stage productions retain the original order as used in the 1959 musical, many other productions have also adapted the changes made in the film, shifting "The Lonely Goatherd" to another scene and adding "My Favorite Things" in its place. In the 1981 West End revival with Petula Clark, Maria and the children sing it at a fair, and in the 1998 Broadway revival with Rebecca Luker it is sung at the Salzburg Festival concert, replacing what would have been an intricate Bach-sounding reprise of "Do Re Mi", showing how exemplary the Von Trapp children were at singing difficult choral compositions. Here, the vocal arrangements were by Jeanine Tesori, giving the audience an idea of how versatile they were.

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