If a piece has words, whether they were added by a lyricist after the melody got to be popular, or as part of the process of creating a song, it ought to be immune from consideration in this thread. This is for pieces of music that have been labelled by their composer or that person’s publicist or people who have come along after the piece was written and named it after their own criteria.
In my opinion we get used to a piece’s title and somehow allow that title to influence to some degree how we feel about or respond to the music itself.
But are there some pieces that just don’t seem to jibe with their titles?
I’m not counting stuff that’s like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony where the title is obviously not intended to describe or allude to the musical content.
One piece that seems to me to fit with its title, in spite of having had words added on after it became a hit, is Thelonious Monk’s Round Midnight. So, if that’s true for you as well. think of some piece that just doesn’t go with its title at all.
Except for being able to identify the tune by way of the title, I don’t get the point of 90% of Sousa’s marches’ titles. Maybe that’s an example to get this started. Of course, if they make good sense to you, that’s a bad example.
How about Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag”? The title makes me think of Canada, even though there’s nothing particularly Canadian about either the music or the origin of the name.
That’s the sort of thing I mean. Many blues tunes have fanciful names that connote (at least to me) absolutely nothing about the melody. But with blues it’s rare to have one without words to start with.
A great number of jazz numbers have fanciful titles that are often word play for its own sake. I could probably name a dozen off the top of my head. But I don’t believe they were meant to convey anything more than “this is the name of this tune.”
As examples of intrumentals that I do think are named appropriately there are:
Clair de Lune
In The Hall of the Mountain King
Danse Macabre
Bolero
Malaguena
Rhapsody in Blue (although this is close to the Beethoven’s Fifth naming concept)
Fingal’s Cave Overture
William Tell Overture (in spite of the Lone Ranger connection)
Mexican Hat Dance
One that comes to mind but which is old enough many Dopers won’t even know what I’m talking about is Horst Jankowski’s A Walk in the Black Forest. This tune is from the 60’s and might just as well have been something about skipping to school or bobbing for apples.
Quite a few instrumentals from that era might apply, but I’m hoping more recent (and more widely known) examples can be named.
I sense we see these things similarly. Leroy Anderson strikes me as a man who wrote a piece and then decided what it sounded like and named it that, no frills. Do you think the idea may have come first for his things?
Plink Plank Plunk
Blue Tango
Belle of the Ball
Serenata
Trumpeter’s Lullaby
Bugler’s Holiday
Jazz Pizzicato
Jazz Legato
Sleigh Ride (has lyrics)
Forgotten Dreams (my favorite Anderson)
Frank Zappa is the king of instrumental titles. A twelve bar blues entitled “Sexual Harassment in the Work Place” and a tender triple time ballad called “I Promise Not to Come in Your Mouth” are two of my favourites.
Not to mention “Lucy’s Seduction of a Bored Violinst and Postlude” or “The Orange County Lumber Truck” or “Prelude to an Afternoon of a Sexually Arounsed Gas Mask.”
Are you saying this tune isn’t appropriately named? Because while the Black Forest may sound like a sinister, spooky or mysterious place to us, to Germans it’s simply a very beautiful area, and has no dark connotations.
I’ve always wondered about “Wipeout” by the Surfaris.
Yes, I know surfers can wipe out–lose control, and fall off their boards. But I continue to be amazed at the level of control each musician shows on the song itself: the drummer doesn’t miss a beat, the guitarist doesn’t miss a note and so on. Every musician is in perfect control of their instrument–and yet the song is about losing control and wiping out. The song definitely doesn’t jibe with its title, IMHO.