Like “Yakety Sax,” this piece was often used as background for pantomime sketches in the late '60s and early ‘70s. I had a 45 cover of it that was much better than the Muppets’ version, but sadly it’s long gone. 
[quote=“terentii, post:80, topic:685178”]
You mean this piece?
[/QUOTE]No, not that one, although it’s another good example of cliche music.
I looked it up in one of my reference books. J. Tim Brymn and Harry Von Tilzer wrote Please Go 'Way and Let Me Sleep in 1902. Arthur Deming introduced it in vaudeville.
I just remembered a record that features a bit of this song. You can hear an excerpt of it in this recording of I Wonder How I Look When I’m Asleep by the Six Jumping Jacks. The excerpt begins at about 0:05 and ends at about 0:12.
I’m sure one of you will be able to decipher this.
What’s the climatic score where it goes:
YEEET- YEE YEET-YEET; YEEET- YEE YEET-YEET.
Yee-YEET-Yee yee…
Here are a couple more.
The music associated with the Can-Can is actually the Infernal Galop from the operetta Orpheus in the Underworld by Jacques Offenbach.
A bit of The Billboard March by John Klohr is widely known and often used as cliche music in movies and cartoons for raucous parades or marching bands. The famous bit starts at about 0:54.
You know, TV Tropes has done this. Oh boy has TV Tropes done this: Standard Snippet is what they call it, and that page has a ton of them, all with apposite YouTube links.
Also, we had a series of threads chasing down the “oriental riff” which lead to this wonderful page on it which Wikipedia cites to. That page was actually made by a Doper in response to our thread.
The “Dun Dun Dun DUN Duuuun” sneaking around music is probably “Mysterious Mose,” circa 1930.
Barber’s Adagio for Strings is probably the go-to for stock (now overdramatic) tragedy, especially if it involves choppers in 'Nam. 
And a little digging awhile back identified the “Generic American Indian riff” as being written for the Florida State Seminoles many years ago, and spreading to similarly themed teams from there, but I don’t have any concrete names or dates to back that up.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there’s a trope page on this very subject. One for national riffs, too.
[Aaaand…Derleth beat me to it. Dangit.]
It originated in one of those “Mondo” movies, soft-core porn travelogues that showed Japanese women walking on clients’ backs, etc.
Whenever people are working, slaving and toiling away, you’re likely to hear “The Song of the Volga Boatmen.”
I may have missed it, but Chopin’s “Funeral March” has certainly become a cliche.
Oliver Hardy sang it to the children in Brats:
This piece? :dubious:
Another song that’s become a “generic Indian riff”:
Told before:
When my all-Basque-Spaniards team got to Scotland, we kept being told about this guy that of course we knew, (uh, no), the greatest of Scottish poets (pleasedtomeethim and all that, so how’s your Becquer? Machado? Lorca? Espronceda? Don’t complain, we’re not even listing any bersolaris**…), oh c´mon, he wrote the lyrics to this song they always play in New Year’s Eve! (Do they? I thought they always played adiós con el corazón…)
Eventually wikipedia and Youtube kindly told us that Auld Lang Syne*, a tune whose name we’d never known and that we associated with “banquets in American movies”, does indeed have lyrics by Robert Burns and is indeed played not just in movie banquets but in NYE movie banquets. And apparently, also in NYE celebrations which are not being filmed.
- Hey, it IS a New Year’s celebration.
** Basque-language poets
More generic “old folks” music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEe-4aygujIChoppers in Nam otherwise known as Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries
Colonel Bogey March/ Hitler has only got one Ball/The River Kwai March
Forgive me if I missed it but aren’t the most cliche wedding songs
Wagner’s Lohengrin (Here Comes the Bride)
Pachelbel’s canon in D
Folks who lived in the New York area in the 1970s will recognize this as the interlude music from one of the regional TV stations there – WPIX (channel 11) maybe? Or WOR (channel 9)? Played, if I recall correctly, when a film ended before the top of the hour.
I know I’ve asked this in other threads, but what’s the title of that cliche Russian dance music?
"Da da da da da daaaaa,
Da da da da da da.
HEY!
“Da da da da da daaaaa,
Da da da da da da.
HEY!”
You’ll hear it in this old Popeye cartoon around 6:45
One more cliche wedding song:
Good one. I always assumed “Mysterious Mose” used the motif because it was appropriate to the context of the song. Never occurred to me that it might be the point of origin.
The stereotypical “graduation” music in the US is Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance, Op. 39, March 1