Re: [F_minor] random observation

["Rafn, Casey D" <casey-rafn@uiowa.edu>]

Hello there - I've been subscribed to this mailing list for about a month now. I really enjoy reading it.

Anyway, I was reading Brad's "assemblage" and I noticed that the a minor fugue from WTC 2 was on there. I played that prelude & fugue for my recital last year (I'm a sophomore piano performance major). I've sung through Messiah a couple times, and I never noticed that!

Is there nothing original under the sun?!

-cr

> 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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