There were two sixth-grade classes at Mount Rose School in Reno when I became a sixth-grader there. My teacher, Mrs. Haight, was a capable, moon-faced, gray-haired woman who had a special interest in maintaining a friendly sort of order in her classroom. Somehow we knew that it would not be worth testing her limits, and so, order prevailed. She brought history alive and was marvelous at bringing huge pull-down maps alive with stories that she sometimes supplemented with slide shows of places around the world.
Mrs. Haight, who signed my autograph book at the end of the year: To my talkative girl, was a better-than-average teacher. But she was not musical, and there is where the other sixth grade class excelled in luck by having been blessed with a teacher who conducted a music hour each day. My desk was in the far right row of the classroom, the side that shared a wall with the musical sixth graders. Situated in the wall next to where I sat was a built-in bookcase that cut the depth of the dividing wall enough for me to clearly hear the piano playing for the the other class as they learned new songs. In fact, if I shut out what Mrs. Haight was talking about and concentrated really hard I could pick out words and sometimes entire phrases to those songs.
My favorite song that I learned through the wall with the other sixth grade was Wonderful Copenhagen. As they rehearsed line-by-line I had to control myself to not hum when they got to the glorious chorus led by the piano's flourish. I was so smitten with the tune that, in the lunchroom one day, I sought out a former fifth-grade friend who was fortunate enough to be in the other sixth grade class and I asked for confirmation of the title and all the lyrics of the song. She fleshed out the whole piece for me as we ate. Wonderful Copenhagen was the most wonderful thing I learned in the sixth grade. I finally had the soundtrack for Mrs. Haight's slide shows and for my own daydreams.
(It's not lost on me now that this is, basically, a drinking song.)
Years ago the Danish Capital was knicknamed Wonderful Copenhagen. It happened in 1952 when the Hollywood movie Hans Christian Andersen became an international success at the time. It was a fictionalised, romanticised story revolving around the life of the Danish poet and story-teller Hans Christian Andersen, not a 'biographical' movie.
The lead role of the Hans Christian Andersen movie was played by Danny Kaye and the song Wonderful Copenhagen soon became an evergreen in the USA as well as abroad. The Wonderful Copenhagen song was written and composed by the American lyrist and composer Frank Loesser.- from VisitCopenhagen.com
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