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October 16

Is "Mulţi ani trăiască" also an Austrian anthem?

Mulţi ani trăiască is a popular Romanian birthday song. (There is a version in Youtube that joins it with La mulţi ani cu sănătate which I think is a different birthday song). I think I heard in a film the music played for an Austrian-Hungarian emperor, so I thought that it is also either an Austrian birthday song or an Austrian-Hungarian anthem. However today I find that the Austrian emperor's personal anthem and later Austrian-Hungarian anthem was Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, the music of which I identified which Deutschlandlied. So the question is: what is the origin of the music of Mulţi ani trăiască? Is it used across the former Austrian-Hungarian Empire? --Error (talk) 11:52, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The melody seems identical to a standard birthday tune “Hoch soll er (sie) leben …”, which is frequently used in Austria at family festivities, largely for kids of preschool / primary age. It is definitely not an anthem. German references call it a folk song, but I can not locate any closer sources to any origin.

There was a significant German speaking population in today´s Romania until WWII and sizeable minorities still exist in Transylvania, the Banat and Bukovina. Please see the article Germans of Romania. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 14:42, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. It is a pity that songs so popular as Mulţi ani trăiască and Hoch soll er (sie) leben don't have articles even in the Romanian and German wikipedias.

Your answer pointed me to Ja, må han (hon) leva. The first notes are similar or the same, although the rest is different to the Romanian song:

James Massengale states that the melody is of a common 18th century form, used by both Mozart and Haydn, and was therefore well known in Austria at the end of the 18th century.[9]

nl:Lang zal hij leven:

De melodie is uit het eind van de 18e eeuw; varianten ervan duiken op in het werk van Mozart, Haydn en Carl Michael Bellman.

So I now know it is at least partly based on an Austrian folk tune, later extended abroad.

--Error (talk) 15:47, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There is a brief mention in the German article on Geburtstagslied (sorry, I forgot how to link that to the de:WP), however, there is no reference there. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 16:45, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

de:Geburtstagslied#Hoch_soll_er_leben. --Wrongfilter (talk) 16:51, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"The Nameless One" in Laibach's Slovania

In Laibach's Slovania (from their album Volk (album) and quoting Hey, Slavs), there are the lines:

Živi, živi, duh slovanski,
Out of the feudal darkness,
Away from the Nameless One
Bodi živ na veke
We stand alone in history,
Facing East in sacrifice

While Laibach's work is ambiguous by design, leaving listeners with doubts about whether they are being ironic or not, a Youtube commenter interpreted that:

yet the disturbing "Facing the East in sacrifice" reminds us of the communism regime imposed on us by our own Slavic brothers from Russia and us being the sacrifice West made in Yalta.

However my question is about "the Nameless One". Who is it intended to be? Certainly, not The Nameless One or The Nameless One (song) – 1993 song sung by Wendy James. --Error (talk) 18:31, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Greg Johnson says:

The final lines are cryptic, but they hint at a modern, Russian-oriented pan-Slavism:

Slovenia and its relations with Russia in the Euro-Atlantic context says in the context of Slovenian-Russian collaboration:

This new sensibility even found its way into popular culture. The Slovenian avant-garde music group Laibach thus included in its 2006 concept album “Volk” a reworking of the Pan-Slav anthem “Hey, Slavs”. Titled “Slovania” (referring to an all-Slavic land), the song included the following lyrics:

--Error (talk) 18:44, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If the singer is Jewish or singing to Jews, he might avoid singing the tetragrammaton aloud. InedibleHulk (talk) 13:08, 21 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Per its article, Laibach was itself a legally nameless one in 1984, signing MD 84 Memorandum with a cross, so..? InedibleHulk (talk) 13:18, 21 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ian Fleming and James Bond

I remember reading an anecdote that when Ian Fleming wanted to use James Bond (ornithologist)'s name in his James Bond books, when asking for permission, he wrote to James Bond's wife: "I hope your husband someday finds a really ugly and disgusting bird he wants to name after Ian Fleming", but he never found one. Did this really happen or is it some kind of urban legend? JIP | Talk 23:55, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

According to James_Bond_(ornithologist)#Fictional_namesake Ian Fleming did not ask permission to use the name. RudolfRed (talk) 02:51, 17 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

And that article is right, but your story is also partly true, JIP. We have the authority of the ornithologist's wife, for this story: Fleming used the name James Bond without permission, provoking Mrs Bond to tell him by letter that her husband saw this as a good joke, to which Fleming replied "I can only offer your James Bond unlimited use of the name Ian Fleming...Perhaps one day he will discover some particularly horrible species of bird which he would like to christen in an insulting fashion." --Antiquary (talk) 10:13, 17 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

According to this book, though, the writer asked for and did get permission from the ornithologist. The fact that the real Bond, James Bond, saw this as a good joke does not necessarily imply he withheld his permission, but could also mean he had forgotten all about it by the time Mrs. Bond learned about the reuse of the name and appraised her husband of this, which was eight years after the book had appeared in print, and nine years after February 1952, when the writer allegedly asked for the permission. --Lambiam 12:21, 17 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]