{"id":8931,"date":"2018-01-19T14:24:29","date_gmt":"2018-01-19T22:24:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/?p=8931"},"modified":"2018-01-19T14:45:56","modified_gmt":"2018-01-19T22:45:56","slug":"video-pick-of-the-week-michael-bautista-plays-mozarts-12-variations-on-ah-vous-dirai-je-maman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/video-pick-of-the-week-michael-bautista-plays-mozarts-12-variations-on-ah-vous-dirai-je-maman\/","title":{"rendered":"Video Pick of the Week: Michael Bautista Plays Mozart’s “12 Variations on ‘Ah vous dirai-je, maman'”"},"content":{"rendered":"

In English-speaking countries, it’s a simple children’s song called “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” that every kid learns to sing; and it’s elemental motif of seven-note lines are among the most popular for beginning musicians all over the world. I grew up being told it was written by Mozart, but that’s not quite right, I learned much later in life. In fact, the song that eventually acquired the English lyrics we all know was a French folk melody written around 1740 and formally published in 1761. The French words for the song\u2014called “Ah vous dirai-je, maman”\u2014 were first published with the music in 1774.\u00a0 Mozart was born in 1756, started playing music at age six, so it was still a relatively new song when he was alive. The reason why “Wolfi” (as Mozart’s wife dubiously calls him in the 1980s film Amadeus<\/em>) became associated with the song is because in 1781 or ’82, when he was 25, he wrote a wonderfully playful piano piece called Twelve Variations on\u00a0‘Ah vous dirai-je, maman’<\/em>, which is exactly what the title promises\u2014fanciful extrapolations on the nursery-rhyme melody.<\/p>\n

The version we’re highlighting here is by Northern California guitarist\u00a0Michael Bautista<\/a>, who made his own solo guitar transcription from the piano work, and recorded it on his excellent self-titled album<\/a>\u00a0back in 2009. (That transcription<\/a> is also available from his website.) Bautista, who holds degrees from both Stanford University and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, has enjoyed a multifaceted career as a classical guitarist, rock guitarist, songwriter, jingle composer, and teacher of both music and math(!).\u00a0\u00a0\u2014Blair Jackson<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In English-speaking countries, it’s a simple children’s song called “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” that every kid learns to sing; and it’s elemental motif of seven-note lines are among the most popular for beginning musicians all over the world. I grew up being told it was written by Mozart, but that’s not quite right, I learned much later in life. In fact, the song that eventually acquired the English lyrics we all know was a French folk melody written around 1740 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":8942,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-watch","post_format-post-format-video"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/mozart-2.jpg?fit=800%2C500&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}