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[lethargic_man]

I was listening to Mahler's first symphony before. I'd wondered beforehand why the third movement, the primary melody for which is a minor-key variant on Frère Jacques, features short snatches of klezmer. Heading off to Wikipedia to find out, I discovered that, by having forgotten the words of Frère Jacques, I'd missed their Catholic import. Mahler is making a point here, contrasting it with Jewish music: a born Jew, he'd had to convert to Christianity in order to progress his career. (That's the way it was in Austria a century ago.)

Staying on a musical theme, is there any music you'd been humming to yourself but haven't heard anywhere else for so long you begin to wonder if you've made it up? Twice when I was a late teenager or in my early twenties I encountered a piece of music which shocked me by demonstrating the theme I'd had going through my head really did exist in the outside world. One was Gounod's Funeral March for a Marionette, the other was Vivaldi's Concerto op. 3 no. 8 (RV 522), which I re-encountered as Bach's setting of it for organ, BWV 593.

Comments

[green_knight]

is there any music you'd been humming to yourself but haven't heard anywhere else for so long you begin to wonder if you've made it up

There was a short phrase that I was convinced I'd made up from my teens onward until a couple of years ago when I heard Bizet's l'Arlesienne suite on the radio. I must have heard it on the radio, because neither my Mum nor I owned it on record, and I didn't hear it in concert - so probably heard it once, and it lodged itself in my brain.

I was rather disappointed that 'my' melody wasn't.