<Tr> <Th> Composer (s) </Th> <Td> Richard Rodgers </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Th> Lyricist (s) </Th> <Td> Oscar Hammerstein II </Td> </Tr> <P> "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" is a show tune from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music . It is sung at the close of the first act by the Mother Abbess . It is themed as an inspirational piece, to encourage people to take every step toward attaining their dreams . </P> <P> This song shares inspirational overtones with the song "You'll Never Walk Alone" from Carousel . They are both sung by the female mentor characters in the shows, and are used to give strength to the protagonists in the story, and both are given powerful reprises at the end of their respective shows . As Oscar Hammerstein II was writing the lyrics, it developed its own inspirational overtones along the lines of an earlier Hammerstein song, "There's a Hill Beyond a Hill". He felt that the metaphors of climbing mountains and fording streams better fitted Maria's quest for her spiritual compass . The muse behind the song was Sister Gregory, the head of Drama at Rosary College in Illinois . The letters that she sent to Hammerstein and to Mary Martin, the first Maria von Trapp on Broadway, described the parallels between a nun's choice for a religious life and the choices that humans must make to find their purpose and direction in life . When she read the manuscript of the lyrics, she confessed that it "drove (her) to the Chapel" because the lyrics conveyed a "yearning that...ordinary souls feel but cannot communicate ." </P>

Who was the person who sang climb every mountain in the sound of music