Mein Hut Der Hat Drei Ecken

In 8^th grade at Beaumont Elementary in Portland, Oregon, our German teacher, Mr. Knopf, was a good enough teacher to realize students remember songs better than lectures. While he taught us numerous German songs, the three I remember are Stille Nactht (Silent Night), O Tannenbaum (Oh Christmas Tree) and Mein Hut Der Hat Drei Ecken (my hat it has three corners).

Radio Swiss Classic (an Internet music channel) is the soundtrack of our lives, and once a month or so, I would hear a classical piece with the tune of Drei Ecken as a motif. For a year or two, I searched the Internet without success to answer this question: did the composer steal a folk tune, or did the folk song borrow a classical motif? And somehow, I never got to the radio in time to see the name of the selection.

I still can’t answer the question about which way the borrowing went, but with the help of my friend Kevin Mostyn, I finally developed a Google query which yielded a result: the tune of Mein Hut Der Hat Drei Ecken is a repeating motif in Paganini’s Festival Of Venice and is entitled O Mamma, Mamma Cara.