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Re: [F_minor] random observation



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 _______________________________________________ F_minor mailing list F_minor@email.rutgers.edu https://email.rutgers.edu/mailman/listinfo/f_minor