Yodel rights

What makes a song a hit? Is it the lyrics, the melody, the performing artist? Or could it come down to a single, indescribable, multi-syllabic line?

That was the question in the creative rights case heard in Munich this week. The tune on the stand was "The Pearl of Tyrol" – otherwise known as the Kufstein-Song. It is said to be the most famous German language folk song of all time.

Do you know the pearl, the pearl of Tirol? / The village of Kufstein, I am sure you know? /Framed by mountains, so calm and still. /Kufstein on the Green River Inn." The song, written by Tyrolian Karl Ganzer, made the composer and the town famous.

Ganzer was a postman by day. But in his spare time he was a passionate musician. He wrote "The Pearl of Tyrol" in 1947. Recorded by one of the great Bavarian yodellers Franzl Lang in 1951, it became an instant hit, its refrain "Holla – rae-di-ri … here with us in Tyrol" echoing around the world.

Legend has it that Ganzer signed the deal with music producer Egon Frauenberger on a post card in the train station restaurant. As simple as it was, the contract maintained that Ganzer was the sole composer – initially.

Is it the yodel that counts?

But in 2001, thirteen years after Ganzer’s death, Frauenberger had the license changed. He added himself as co-composer. Frauenberger claimed the yodelling refrain, "Holla-rae-do-ri" was his idea. And he began collecting one-twelfth of the royalties – up to 3,000 Euros a year.

In the court case brought against Frauenberger by Ganzer’s heirs this week in Munich, Frauenberger asserted that it wasn’t the lyrics, the melody or the great stars of German folk music who have performed the song over the years that had made it a hit.

It was the yodel "Holla-rae-di-ri" that set it apart. Or, to be exact: "Holla-rae-di-ri, di-ri, di-ri."

"Holla-rae-di-ri" or "Holla-rae-do-ro?"

But the problem with yodelling, and this is what chief judge Peter Guntz found when listening to "testimony" in the case, is that it rarely follows a standard score.

Some sing "holla-lei". Some sing "holla-huri". One version of the song even goes "kuck-kuck, kuck-kuck."

Guntz and his colleagues found that this discrepancy – and the fact that the music producer had waited fifty years to stake his claim – was evidence enough that the song was probably a hit on its own.

And that Frauenberger’s part in the music, whatever it may have been, was nothing to yodel home about.

"Holla-rae-di-ri, di-ri – here in Tyrol."

Author: Kateri Jochum
Editor: Susan Houlton