Showing posts with label 19th Century. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 19th Century. Show all posts
Waltz of the Flowers
Thanks to my friend Lisa for identifying this song for me. All I had was a vague rendition of the most famous portion of the composition, whistled through a cell phone exchange. She entertained my indulgent query, and nailed the tune, even though I interrupted her life at 10:00 pm on a school night. That's what friends are for. :)
Artist: Tchaikovsky
Year: 1892
Rating: Warm
The Washington Post March
What's funny is the context in which I spontaneously started whistling this tune. It was on a notorious block of Mission Street dotted with pawn shops, divey Chinese restaurants, and ample drug distribution. A very regal march it was.
Artist: John Philip Sousa, composer
Year: 1889
Rating: Lukewarm
Three Stooges Theme
...'specially that very last part, "do do dee doo dee doo!"
Based on the traditional folk song Listen to the Mockingbird from 1855.
Era: 1930s Stooges movies
The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze
This is exactly the sort of song lodged in the collective consciousness that makes writing this blog worthwhile! Why I woke up with it, I've no right idea. A look at the lyrics reveals a serious genderqueer narrative in the song that I'd never noticed before: not only is the girl described as "handsome" by the narrator (I know, not an uncommon description for a woman in those days) but at length, the daring young trapeze artist has purloined the singer's love away, trained her for the trapeze, made her "assume a masculine name" and by the last verse, she's wooing the girls in the audience who take her for the daring young man. Handsome, indeed!
It's possible (though I can't say for certain) that my first encounter with "The Man on the Flying Trapeze" was in the Popeye short from 1934, which of course I didn't see til I was a kid in the '70s, some 40-odd years later, and more than a century after the song was first published in 1867. If, in fact, my neuronal association with this song connects to Popeye, then perhaps this earworm manifested itself due to some references my pal Scott and I made several days ago to Popeye, the Robert Altman movie. Songs from said movie are also still stuck in my head from its debut thirty (gulp!) years ago. Music and memory: kind of awesome.
Artist (original): Gaston Lyle, Alfred Lee, George Leybourne
Year: 1867
Popularized: 1930s, various artists
Performed above by Henry Hall and His Orchestra, Len Berman on vocals, c. 1930s
Rating: Warm
The Villain's Theme
Well, the mystery has been solved, as least, it seems so. Once again, my friend Buffy has saved the day. You may remember her sleuthing skills from the mystery of the Infernal Gallup. Now, she's helped us figure out what the hell that spooky, sneaky cartoon music is. A ringtone of the song is listed as "Cartoon Creeping Music" at AudioSparx. The real title turns out to be an appropriately-named composition called The Villain's Theme, and Amazon.Com credits it to Al Weber (and his Repetitious 88 Keys). However, the packaging on the "Memories" collection "Silent Film Music" available at Amazon credits him as Al Webber (with two b's).
Thing is, I don't think that Mr. Web(b)er is the originator of the piece, since this album, released in 1995, features music from other composers, all credited to Al (I don't think he can take credit for the William Tell Overture, for example). I think Webber and his Repetitious Keys performed all the tunes in this collection, but the piece was penned by somebody else. We also don't know how old it is yet. It could have been published anywhere from the late 19th Century to the early 1930s if it did feature in silent films.
The internets don't seem to have anything on this Al Webber guy, nor his 88 Repetitious Keys. Searches yield results for "A.L. Webber," but I don't imagine that the high-profile Andrew Lloyd Webber had to do compilation CDs for extra cash in the '90s. If anyone has any feedback or more information on this composition, please leave a comment!
Artist: Al Webber (and his 88 Repetitious Keys); composer unknown
Year: c. 19th Century to 1930s
Rating: Warm
Thanks, Buffy, for your ever present diligence, curiosity, and mad research skills!
Thing is, I don't think that Mr. Web(b)er is the originator of the piece, since this album, released in 1995, features music from other composers, all credited to Al (I don't think he can take credit for the William Tell Overture, for example). I think Webber and his Repetitious Keys performed all the tunes in this collection, but the piece was penned by somebody else. We also don't know how old it is yet. It could have been published anywhere from the late 19th Century to the early 1930s if it did feature in silent films.
The internets don't seem to have anything on this Al Webber guy, nor his 88 Repetitious Keys. Searches yield results for "A.L. Webber," but I don't imagine that the high-profile Andrew Lloyd Webber had to do compilation CDs for extra cash in the '90s. If anyone has any feedback or more information on this composition, please leave a comment!
Artist: Al Webber (and his 88 Repetitious Keys); composer unknown
Year: c. 19th Century to 1930s
Rating: Warm
Thanks, Buffy, for your ever present diligence, curiosity, and mad research skills!
Infernal Gallop
My dear friend Buffy, whom I've known since the sixth grade, musical era of Thriller and Madonna's first album, has cracked the case of the mystery classical song rather brilliantly. From the rudimentary schematic of musical notes I offered in that entry, Buffy deduced, correctly, that the song was a 19th Century composition by Jacques Offenbach from his operetta Orpheus in the Underworld. I imagine many of us know it as a song that Bugs Bunny can-canned to. The part that was in my head starts at 1:28.
Here's the comment thread from my Facebook page in which the revelation was made:
Lisa
What instrument(s) are playing?
If you want to call and sing it in to my cell phone I might be able to figure it out :)
about an hour ago ·
Star Wars - Imperial March
It would normally be pretty ominous for Darth Vader's theme to pound into one's head first thing in the morning, but I know where it came from. When I blogged about the spooky old children's tune The Hearse Song about a week ago, I cited the melody of the song's last lines to Chopin's composition Marche Funèbre. I thought at that time that the opening notes of the funeral march sounded similar to the Imperial March from Star Wars, but didn't think about it again until this morning when the evil Sith lord came a knockin' on my cranium. Turns out the "Imperial March" was somewhat based on Chopin's sonata, so the connection wasn't random at all. Fascinating, isn't it, how our brain can click right into a direct link even if we don't consciously know the connection?
Writer: John Williams
Original Artist: The London Symphony Orchestra
Year: 1980
Rating: Warm
Note: The March was introduced in 1980's The Empire Strikes Back and has been used as a motif in all the following films. I'd attributed it in my mind to the beginning of the original trilogy.
The Hearse Song
This was a favorite old tune we sang–and loved–for years at Camp until some prudish parents complained that it was inappropriate for children. Kids are totally fascinated with death, morbid imagery, blood and guts. Nothin' wrong with that. It's us adults who repress our natural curiosity and perpetuate the taboo by avoiding the topics of death, decay, and the putrescence of bodily functions. Those JCC parents weren't alone though. The above version of this traditional tune appeared as part of the Alvin Schwartz book series Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which is one of the most frequently "challenged" books for banning in contemporary history, according to the American Library Association.
The version we sang was different, and I'm partial to it, naturally, though I do have to give props to the Schwartz interpretation for the final, disgusting lines:
Your stomach turns a slimy green
And pus pours out like whipping cream
You spread it on a slice of bread
And that's what you eat when you are dead!
Maybe our version below was a bit tamer, but fascinatingly enough, the old-fashioned game of pinochle remains consistent in most versions I've found online:
Oh don't you laugh when the hearse goes by,
Or else you'll be the next to die
They'll wrap you up in a bloody sheet
And throw you down about fifty feet
You'll be okay for about a week
But then your coffin will start to leak
The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
The ants play pinochle on your snout
The big black bug with purple eyes
Goes in your kidney and out your eyes
Your eyes decay and roll away
And that's the end of the beautiful day
Pray for the dead and the dead will pray for you
Simply because there is nothing else to do
Pray for the dead.
[That last triplet of lines are sung to the melody of the third movement of Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2, Marche Funèbre (click on it; I'll bet it sounds familiar). We always sang it by cupping our hands over our noses and flapping the fingers against one nostril so as to create a creepy vibrating effect to the words.]
Artist: Traditional, unknown. Interpretation by Alvin Schwartz, sung by the actor George S. Irving
Year: Unknown; recording c. 1980s.
Rating: Warm
Note: Chopin's funeral march, c. 1837.
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Buffy Phew! Found it: The composer is Jacques Levy Offenbach. The song is "Infernal Gallup" from the opera Orpheus in the Underworld
Buffy
Buffy
Hmm...I can do that! Just another one of Buffy's brillllliant ideas! Thanks, Buff!
Artist: Jacques Offenbach
Year: 1858
Rating: Warm