Butterfly Waltz

 BUTTERFLY WALTZ. AKA and see "Kitchen Waltz (The)," "Life Let Us Cherish." Old-Time, Waltz. USA; Texas, Missouri. C Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. R.P. Christeson noted the tune from fiddlers at the Texas Fiddlers' Association in 1950, who played it under this title. The Butterfly Waltz is the name of a dance performed to the tune in which a man dances with one woman on each side (hence the name "Butterfly"), first in a stately march up and down the hall, then a turn in place and a right-and-left figure. As happens with a popular named dance, the name of the dance became attached to different melodies, so that there are other "Butterfly Waltzes" extent. However, Christeson's melody was originally a song air called “Freut Euch des Lebens” (Come Let Us be Joyful), composed in Switzerland in 1795 by Hans Georg Nageli with words by poet Johann Martin Usteri (1763-1827). It was adapted in English as “Life Let Us Cherish” and became an enormously popular air in Britain and America, where it served as a waltz as well as an air. Printed source: R.P. Christeson (Old Time Fiddlers Repertory, vol. 1), 1973; No. 236, p. 191.

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