User:Janneman/Drafts

Drei Chinesen mit dem Kontrabass (Three Chinesemen With A Double Bass) is a popular nonsensical German children's song. It constitutes a very simple form of wordplay. While the lyrics remain unchanged, with every stanza all its vowels are consecutively interchanged by all the vowels, umlauts and diphthongs found in the German language.

Melody

The most widely used tune today is as follows^[1], slight variations in the dotted quarter notes are not uncommon:

A slightly different tune used to be more common in Germany and still prevails in Western Austria and the German speaking part of Switzerland:

.

Note that in the ambitus is only a Perfect fifth in the latter but a Minor seventh in the former Variation.

^ nach Weber-Kellermann, Nr. 169, S. 214, transponiert, typische rhythmische Variation dargestellt

[1] Weber-Kellermann, Nr. 169, S. 214, transponiert, typische rhythmische Variation dargestellt

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