Richard Charles Rodgers (June 28, 1902 December 30, 1979) was an American composer of the music for more than 900 songs and 40 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. His compositions have had a significant impact on popular music down to the present day, and have an enduring broad appeal.
Rodgers is one of only two persons to have won an Oscar, a Grammy, an Emmy, a Tony Award, and a Pulitzer Prize (Marvin Hamlisch is the other).
"Edelweiss" is a show tune from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music. It is named after the edelweiss, a white flower found high in the Alpine hills. The song is sung by Captain Georg Ludwig von Trapp as he rediscovers music and a love for his children. Later on in the show it is sung as a defiant statement of Austrian patriotism by the von Trapp family in the face of the pressure put upon Captain von Trapp to join the navy of Nazi Germany.
While The Sound of Music was in tryouts in Boston, Richard Rodgers felt he needed to express the sense of loss in song as.