Re: [F_minor] random observation

[Brad Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>]

Etha Williams wrote:
> In my free time I enjoy writing little compositions, and my latest attempt
> is a fugue using the c - d flat - g - a flat motif from GG's string quartet
> as subject and the B-A-C-H theme from Art of Fugue as countersubject.
>
> Anyway, while doing this, I noticed something kind of cool -- the motif from
> GG's string quartet is a musical palindrome: pitch-wise, the retrograde (a
> flat - g - d flat - c) is the same as the inversion at the sixth!
>
> Well, I thought it was cool...

Singing hymns in church last week I noticed a big B-A-C-H in the alto 
line of MELITA.  (Same hymn that's used at a climactic point in 
Britten's opera for children, "Noye's Fludde"....)

That four-note Gould subject, C-Db-G-Ab, was also used a few years later 
all the way through the Star Trek episode "The Corbomite Maneuver", in 
Fred Steiner's soundtrack.  (You know, the one where there's that 
spinning cube giving off radiation, and then they do half an hour of 
bluffing and posturing about whose ship is going to destroy whose, and 
then they go visit the bridge of the other one...and find young Clint 
Howard having a drink of tranya?)  Don't know if Steiner got that 
melodic idea from Gould or not.

I'm tempted to do a little "separated at birth?" assemblage sometime, 
putting together classical themes with other pieces that used them 
later.  Some ideas for it:

- This Gould/Steiner thing with the Corbomite fugue subject

- Chabrier's "Espana", Waldteufel's "Espana" waltz using it, Perry 
Como's "Hot diggity", and Satie's "Espanana"

- Rachmaninoff's second symphony (2nd mvt theme), Leroy Anderson's 
"Horse and Buggy" quoting it, and the Eric Carmen song "Never gonna fall 
in love again"

- Bach's A minor fugue subject from WTC 2 and Handel's "And with his 
stripes" from "Messiah"

- Rossini's "William Tell" overture and the way it turns up in 
Shostakovich's symphony #15


Brad Lehman
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