doodleabcsUpdated
THE STORY OF A SONG
Hum it, then hum Twinkle, Twinkle. Same tune.
The alphabet song borrows a melody that was printed without words in 1761, played with by Mozart and set to a poem in 1806. The letters only arrived in 1835, and they rhyme best in American English.
1761 a tune without words
Date the tune
THE SHORT ANSWER
The tune, the rhyme and the letters
each have their own date.
THE TUNE
The oldest published version of the tune dates from 1761 and had no words. Mozart later wrote a set of 12 variations on it, known by its French song title.
Date each versionTHE RHYME
The English poet Jane Taylor wrote the words of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, published in Rhymes for the Nursery in 1806 with her sister Ann.
See the numbersTHE LETTERS
Boston music publisher Charles Bradlee copyrighted the alphabet version in 1835. Who first fitted the letters to the tune is not known.
Sing it differentlyDATE THE TUNE
Pick a version of the melody to see when it appeared. The longer the bar, the older that version is.
Dates from The Conversation, IMSLP, the University of Toronto's Representative Poetry Online and Dictionary.com.
TWO NUMBERS WORTH KNOWING
One figure on how long the tune waited for letters,
one on how much of Twinkle we have forgotten.
74 years
From the 1761 tune to the 1835 copyright
The melody was in print by 1761. The alphabet words were copyrighted in Boston in 1835, so the tune was already old when it became the ABC song.
TUNE TO LETTERS
5 verses
Verses in Jane Taylor's original poem
The poem has five four-line verses, 20 lines in all. Later verses thank the star for guiding the traveller in the dark and peeping through the curtains.
THE STAR · 1806
The Conversation notes that a common answer credits Bradlee with a song called The Schoolmaster in 1834; library records describe that piece as a different song, a glee for three voices.
FOUR WAYS TO SING IT
The ABC song has picked up variants over the years. Each one changes a small part of the tune.
Twinkle, Twinkle and the ABC song share a tune, and Baa, Baa, Black Sheep is close to it. Humming them in a row makes the match obvious.
Sung at speed, those five letters can sound like one word, elemenopee. One newer version spreads the letters evenly, at the cost of the rhymes.
In British English Z is zed, which does not rhyme with the American zee. Zed versions of the song change the last line and drop the closing couplet.
Some versions run from Z to A, with E, D, C, B, A sung as quickly as L, M, N, O, P.
OTHER ALPHABETS
The same melody is used to teach the Spanish, German, French and Arabic alphabets. In Canada a French version is taught with the tune adjusted at the end for the two-syllable French name for Y.
Other languages have their own memory poems. Japanese has the Iroha, a poem using the kana syllables, and Chinese learners have the Thousand Character Classic. Songs and rhymes help because we remember timing and sound patterns well, as music educator Rachael Dwyer explains.
Questions
Who wrote the ABC song?
Nobody knows who first put the letters to the tune. Boston music publisher Charles Bradlee copyrighted the alphabet version in 1835, and the melody itself is much older.
Did Mozart write the tune?
No. The tune was already in print by 1761. Mozart wrote a set of 12 variations on it, known as Ah, vous dirai-je, maman, dated by IMSLP to around 1780–82.
Is it really the same tune as Twinkle, Twinkle?
Yes. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and the ABC song use the same melody, and Baa, Baa, Black Sheep is very similar. Jane Taylor's words were published in 1806.
Why does it end on zee?
The song rhymes Z with G, P and V, which works in American English. In British English Z is zed, so zed versions change the ending.
Why does L, M, N, O, P go so fast?
In the usual version those five letters squeeze into the time of two, so they can sound like one word. A slower variant spreads the letters out but loses some of the rhymes.
ABOUT THIS NAME
doodleabcs.com is part of the DoodleSale portfolio. It isn't in an auction right now, but you can ask about leasing it.
