Anyone in their 50s remember this from primary school??

[ICanSeeClearlyNowLorraineHasGone]

I’m 58 and I remember putting on a play in primary school all about the wooden horse of Troy.

It had songs - it might have just been a series of songs now I think of it but there could have been spoken parts too.

Im assuming it wasn’t just our school but nobody I’ve ever met seems to remember it.

Only asking because the songs have been known to lodge themselves in my brain as ear worms from time to time 😁

Your missing lyrics ‘something something’ are:

‘Hors de combat, Oh what a tragedy!’

(And it’s: ‘mild as a ham’ and ‘tender as lamb’ 😉) x

LOL

I completely mispronounced it - for years I thought it was Eelay nay letterINE ong FONG

Absolute nonsense.

Chanticleer does start to sing Mendelssohn at one point, after the fox has flattered him sufficiently

"ooooo fawther wiiiiiings, fawther wiiiiiiiings of a d-urk!"

which we all found hilarious, obvs

oh, and every now and again I randomly start singing "for he was one two three four five six seven eight NINE feet, NINE feet"

Oh yes, he does, that's right!

The dove was different though, and definitely a dove, not a manifestation of Chanticleer. I may be mixing up my plays. 😳 It was a long time ago!

We did Jonah Man Jazz and Chanticleer. Had totally forgotten their existence, so thank you..

What a fabulous trip down memory lane!

I’m still singing in a couple of choirs and putting on performances in my 50’s, wonder how much of my love of this was ignited by primary school.

I can’t imagine now the effort it took for the teachers to organise, so many songs.

King Menelaus is on the attack
He wants his Queen Helen back
Here come the Greeks

we did that one

Something something is 'Hors de combat'.

Chantecleer, what a handsome fella
Chantecleer, monarch of them all
His name was chantecleer, red and black and yellow feathers
see him hanging there upon the wall

or something like that

When miss delilah went a-walking in the market square…

Yes Danny Kaye in the film?

None of those things apply.

I played the recorder a lot and did solos in the assemblies, including playing the National Anthem and hymns etc. We also did a lot of country dancing, but like I say, I just can't remember being in any plays or shows.

We did country dancing

We did that! I can still remember so many of the words.

Hans Christian Andersen. The best known song is provably The Ugly Duckling.

Wonderful wonderful Copenhagen! The Danny Kaye film made me want to go there (never have though).

Jonah Man Jazz used to annoy me as a pedantic child - 'beat groups playin' the rock n roll' in Biblical times? I think not!

Funnily enough, we did finally get to Copenhagen this August and saw the Little Mermaid statue.

I had an LP of Danny Kaye singing "children's songs" and the Ugly Duckling was on there. In fact, I've almost certainly still got it but the stereo needs a new fuse before I can play it.

Same here. It involved wooden swords for some reason.

I think I had that LP.

We certainly did a performance for parents at my primary school. I remember Joseph, Jonah Man Jazz and also something about Daniel in the lions den.
We also did country dancing with Mrs Ayres.
Happy times!

Oh yes, the 70s folk revival where every third activity was based upon something produced from Cecil Sharp House and there was a dusty autoharp lurking in the back of the music room that was only ever used by somebody trying to replicate the sound from Bagpuss when they should have been looking for one of the three maximum treble recorders (Hohner, obviously) to provide a slightly less squeaky compliment to everybody else doing descant.

Country Dancing - stripping the willow, right hand, left hand, dosey-do your partner, right hand, left hand - GRAND CHAIN!

Always taken by somebody wearing at least one item of cheesecloth, too, usually in direct competition with the classically trained was-once-a-Kings-scholar teacher who came into his own when preparing a select few for the David Willcocks counterpoint arrangements at Christmas, especially when he got to use the local church's massive manual pipe organ - but spent the rest of the year ranting 'It's All THings BrighT anD BeauTiFul, NOT ALL FINGS BRI' AN' BOO'I'FULL' from behind a beige Yamaha upright that had been rolled out from where the blue crash mats were kept for PE for Singing Practice every Tuesday morning, along with Come and Sing or if it was a new and shiny school, the orange Morning Has Broken hymnbooks.

The Samson/Noah/Moses stuff was what he chose for a brief respite from attempting to cast pearls before swine imbue, instill and engender choral diction into 250 resolutely regionally accented children.

I think I did too and one LP with a glove puppet lion on it?

think the man who sang on one of the LPs lived locally

Yes! The glove puppet lion! Happy days.

We did square dancing and it was THE most popular lunchtime club run by the inestimable Mr Jeacock. He always said that if any of his records got scratched, he would never run the sessions again so we were always really careful. He sadly died during an Easter holiday - the records outlasted him - but nobody took the club on and we were heartbroken.

We always had a choir and an orchestra. I started in the orchestra on treble recorder then progressed to the cello. We got to play in assembly every Friday. When our music teacher left to have her baby, the Head took over hymn practice and we were allowed to stay in our orchestra places for it. He introduced some new "funky" versions of bangers like "Holy, Holy, Holy" and "At the Name of Jesus" and we loved it.

Now as I'm nearing the end of my career as a school music teacher, it's so obvious that my primary school music teachers had a strong influence on me. One who joined in year 6 remained in contact as I played in another orchestra she ran and she always said I was like a daughter to her. Sadly she died a couple of years ago. The piano-playing Head is still going strong I believe although I'm not in that part of the world any more. I have taught people who are professional musicians - will they look back on Music Matters (the original version with cassettes) as we are doing today?

I thought the lion puppet was in my imagination

thank you

yes to the funky versions of hymns

also the black and white bbc music show shown on the telly on wheels where there was a metronome and glockenspiel regularly featuring

Ian and Marie Griffith presenting with perfect bbc diction?