What is that stereotypical "sneaking" tune and where did it originate?

Cafe Society
1

I’m sure you know the tune I mean, but since I haven’t mastered the technical issues of recording a guitar track for use online, I hope that you, the reader, can also read music. This probably isn’t 100% accurate, but I think it’s close enough to give you the idea and allow you to recognize the tune I mean.

It was used in the end credits 1956 mega-production Around The World In Eighty Days, but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t already in existence at that time. It’s been widely used in TV shows, cartoons, other movies, and so on, but I have no idea what the heck it is.

What is this thing?

2

I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t exist in cartoons as early as the 30’s.

Probably the only thing to discover is–did it exist in the music played during silent films?

3

I think we did this thread and settled on it being called “Mysterioso Pizzicato”. Notation [here.](Mysterioso Pizzicato)

4

Youru link doesn’t seem to work.

It goes back to 1914 according to an earlier thread.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=636365&highlight=pizzicato

5

HMS Irruncible got it, as he or she must be referring to the same tune that pulykamell linked to here. For easy access I put up a screenshot of the score here. (No worries, it’s public domain.)

I was already aware that I put in an extra eight note in the second measure, but they did this in Around The World In Eighty Days, and that’s the way I wrote it down. (Well, that, and I also halved each measure and used quarter rests to get the staccato effect.) In the film, the tune was used to symbolize Detective Fix slinking and sneaking about just behind the protagonists throughout the story.

Neither of the two examples of “burglar music” that Spoke linked to here are the same piece, although they both do begin with the same tonic, minor-third, fifth, and octave. It’s almost as if somebody wanted to use the actual Pizzicato Mysterioso when it was still under copyright, so they only took the first four notes.

6

Does anyone have a link to a recording of it for those of us who don’t read music?

7

Hey! I thought I answered this question before. Good thing someone found the old thread, because I didn’t remember the answer. :slight_smile:

There is a MIDI file in the link in that thread. Click on it on this page.

8

Note: You may need to try the link in Chrome or (gah!) IE9. Firefox has been sucking extremely hard as of version 15.x.x, and might not play media for you. I haven’t been able to play any Youtube or sound clips in FF for a couple of months.

9

You did answer my question all right, but Spoke didn’t ask the right question in the other thread. IMHO there’s nothing scary about this music. It’s “sneaky”, not “scary”.

10

This is a little old, but I had to reply. I took piano lessons for all of four months when I was maybe nine years old (this is going back 17 years!). This was the last song that I learned to play because it involved the black keys. I remember it being called “The Thief” or something similar, and it even had words that I vaguely remember:

Got to catch the villllllaaaainnn
Lock him up in priiiiii-son

I know it’s not the real version of the song, but I thought it was interesting at least

11

The John W. Schaum books used those same lyrics when I took piano–ca. 1961!

It’s:

Got to catch the villllllaaaainnn
Lock him up in priiiiii-son
He must learn that crime can’t pay
Or in prison heeeee’lllllll stay.

Even at that young age, Schaum’s lyrics annoyed me no end, and were inspirational in my own songwriting–in an “I can do better than that” kind of way!

12

Does Chrome have a built-in MIDI player? IE9 still hooks into Media Player, but Microsoft doesn’t allow that for any other browser. So if you don’t have a built in MIDI player, you have to have QuickTime installed. (Or you can just download the file and then open it in Media Player.)

Oh, and Firefox 15 works fine for me, on two different computers. You may want to try a GQ thread to help you fix the problem.

13

A major-scale variant is the persistent motif for a 1990 song by The Pogues called “Rain Street”.

14

P.D.Q. Bach recorded a piece with a “creeping” motif, punctuated by ensemble members calling out (with varying degrees of outrage) “Hey!”

15

I remember this from my early piano lessons, too. Still have the book.

And my mind invariably “sings” the lyrics in my head when I hear those notes.

16

That should settle it. PDQ goes back to (?) 1742, I believe.

Hey!

17

Somehow–probably an update on something somewhere–the problem fixed itself.