Canonical Coffee
In a conversation with David last week, he mentioned that Mozart had allegedly written a canon about musselmen, in the context of describing the ills of drinking too much coffee, like the Turks supposedly did.
After a bit of Google searching, I dug up the full lyrics (it seems that dozens of Germans, Austirans, and Swiss cited snippets of the lyrics from memory as common knowledge, but few of them had ever bothered to actually write this thing down):
Translated, it reads
If you'd wondered why the spelled word doesn't match the German word Kaffee, the answer is that C, A, F, F, E, E are also the first six notes of the melody. Mozart was a clever fellow.
After a bit of Google searching, I dug up the full lyrics (it seems that dozens of Germans, Austirans, and Swiss cited snippets of the lyrics from memory as common knowledge, but few of them had ever bothered to actually write this thing down):
C-A-F-F-E-E, trink nicht so viel Kaffee,
nicht für Kinder ist der Türkentrank,
schwächt die Nerven, macht Dich schwach und krank,
sei doch kein Muselmann, der das nicht lassen kann.
Translated, it reads
C-A-F-F-E-E, drink not so much coffee,
Not for children is the Turkish drink,
Weakens the nerves, makes you weak and ill,
Be then no muslim, who cannot give it up.
If you'd wondered why the spelled word doesn't match the German word Kaffee, the answer is that C, A, F, F, E, E are also the first six notes of the melody. Mozart was a clever fellow.