Musical surprises #9: Hornpipes are in 3…
Well, sometimes they are anyway. For many people, especially dance teachers, ‘hornpipe’ is synonymous with 2/4 time. But there are also triple meter hornpipes, often notated in 3/2, particularly common…
Musical surprises #8: Petrushka’s not all by Stravinsky
Well, not exactly, but the point is that one of the big tunes in the Wet Nurses’ dance in Stravinsky’s Petrushka is a Russian folk song (Я вечор млада во…
Musical surprises #7: Jingle Bells doesn’t go like you think it does
Jingle Bells is a song you’ve known ever since you were a child, and you hear every christmas. The chorus has a shape and a direction that is so simple…
Musical surprises #6: The ‘Theme slave’ in Coppélia is not by Delibes
Friends from Coppélia: a borrowing from Moniuszko Friends from Coppélia, the set of dances in Act 1, usually danced to the Thème Slave varié, is not by Delibes at all.…
Musical surprises #5: Mirlitons are cakes
OK, so I’ve posted about this before, but hey it’s Christmas, and it’s still one of the great mysteries of musical life: why in the Kingdom of the Sweets in…
Musical surprises #4: There’s a cuckoo in the Nutcracker
Well, a toy one anyway. If you look at the instrumentation for The Nutcracker over at www.tchaikovsky-research.org (possibly the best resource about any composer on the web), you’ll see that…