Au clair de la lune

[3] "Au clair de la lune, Mon ami Pierrot, Prête-moi ta plume Pour écrire un mot.

Va chez la voisine, Je crois qu'elle y est, Car dans sa cuisine On bat le briquet."

Il dit à son tour : –Ouvrez votre porte, Pour le Dieu d'Amour.

Some sources report that "plume" (pen) was originally "lume" (an old word for "light" or "lamp"), which makes more sense of the song’s contextual framework.

[7] The American-born Brazilian/French composer Charles-Lucien Lambert wrote a set of variations on the tune (ca 1860) 19th-century French composer Camille Saint-Saëns quoted the first few notes of the tune in the section "The Fossils", part of his suite The Carnival of the Animals Claude Debussy, composer of the similarly named "Clair de lune" from his Suite bergamasque, uses "Au clair de la lune" as the basis of his song "Pierrot" (Pantomime, L. 31) from Quatre Chansons de Jeunesse.

[8] In 1926, Samuel Barber rewrote "H-35: Au Claire de la Lune: A Modern Setting of an old folk tune" while studying at the Curtis Institute of Music.

"[10]In 1955, Swiss composer Frank Martin wrote a setting of Au clair de la lune for one of his children to practice octaves (Primo part).

[13][14] According to those researchers, the phonautograph recording contains the beginning of the song, "Au clair de la lune, mon ami Pierrot, prête moi".

sa fille est morte Ce n'est pas un jeu Ouvrez-lui la porte Pour l'amour de Dieu.

The "Story of my Friend Peterkin and the Moon" in The Ladies Pocket Magazine (1835) mentions the song several times and ends: Indeed, what must have been the chagrin and despair of this same Jaurat, when he heard sung every night by all the little boys of Paris, that song of "Au clair de la lune", every verse of which was a remembrance of happiness to Cresson, and a reproach of cruelty to friend Peterkin, who would not open his door to his neighbor, when he requested this slight service.

[17]In his 1952 memoir Witness, Whittaker Chambers reminisced: In my earliest recollections of her, my mother is sitting in the lamplight, in a Windsor rocking chair, in front of the parlor stove.

She sings: "Au clair de la lune; Mon ami, Pierrot; Prête-moi ta plume; Pour écrire un mot."

"[19] In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel Tender is the Night, Dick and Nicole Diver's children sing the first verse at the request of the film producer Earl Brady.