The Elements (song)

"The Elements" (1959) is a song by musical humorist Tom Lehrer, which recites the names of all the chemical elements known at the time of writing, up to number 102, nobelium. It can be found on his albums "More Songs by Tom Lehrer" and "An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer". The song is sung to the tune of the Major General's Song from "The Pirates of Penzance" by Gilbert and Sullivan. [ [http://www.cris.com/~oakapple/gasdisc/mdlehrer.htm Review and analysis of Lehrer's G&S parodies] ]

The song is also included in the musical revue "Tom Foolery", which also includes many of Lehrer's other songs.

Description of the song

The ordering of elements in the lyrics fits the meter of the song, and includes much alliteration, and thus has little or no relation to the ordering in the periodic table. This can be seen for example in the opening and closing lines:

:"There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium, ":"And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium," :"....":"And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin, and sodium."

:"These are the only ones of which the news has come to Ha'vard,":"And there may be many others but they haven't been discarvard."

Since that time, 15 more elements have been discovered ("synthesized", technically), and 9 of those have been named. The 9 are lawrencium, rutherfordium, dubnium, seaborgium, bohrium, hassium, meitnerium, darmstadtium, and roentgenium.

Lehrer was a Harvard math lecturer, and the final rhyme of "Harvard" and "discovered" is delivered in a parody of a Boston accent, i.e., in a non-rhotic manner, so that the two words rhyme. Lehrer, a native of New York, does not normally speak with that accent.

Background

Lehrer drew the inspiration for "The Elements" from the song "Tchaikovsky and Other Russians", written by Ira Gershwin, which listed fifty Russian composers in a similar manner."A Conversation With Tom Lehrer", BBC Interview, 1999.]

"The Elements" differs from "The Major-General's Song" in that:
*Lehrer's usual performance is more monotoned than its source tune, although the sheet music in the 1981 book contains Sullivan's normal score.
*As per usual with Lehrer, it is accompanied solely by his own piano playing (as opposed to a full orchestra).
*On the live version, Lehrer pauses in the middle for a spoken interlude, in which he talks to the audience ("I hope you're all taking notes, because there's going to be a short quiz next period!") while vamping on the piano.
*The verse structure is altered, omitting the third verse of the original as well as all of the "responses" from the play's chorus, and adding an extra two lines at the end of the last verse.
*The song ends with a piano coda: Shave and a haircut, two bits.

Parodies and covers

Although "The Elements" is a pastiche of the Major-General's song, it has itself been parodied, including by the group Amateur Transplants (of "London Underground" fame) as "The Drugs Song". The Jewish parody group Schlock Rock acknowledges Lehrer and "The Elements" as inspiration for the "The Shabbat Song" [ [http://www.shlockrock.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=56&L=288#lyric Liner notes for the CD "Woodschlock" at the SchlockRock website] ]

The song has been covered by other artists. For example, the rapper Jesse Dangerously covered "The Elements" on his album "How To Express Your Dissenting Political Viewpoint Through Origami", where the song is titled "Tom Lehrer's The Elements". [ [http://www.discogs.com/release/327567 "Tom Lehrer's The Elements" at Discogs.com] ]

Footnotes

Further reading

*Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer, 1981, has sheet music for many of Lehrer's songs, including "The Elements".

External links

* [http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/elements.htm Lyrics to the song]
* [http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=r5ielkkkkze.fsf%40gill.maths.keele.ac.uk Guitar chords from alt.guitar.tab newsgroup]
* [http://www.privatehand.com/flash/elements.html Flash animation of song]