{"id":4512,"date":"2021-06-15T13:08:23","date_gmt":"2021-06-15T20:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=4512"},"modified":"2021-06-15T13:10:17","modified_gmt":"2021-06-15T20:10:17","slug":"music-youve-heard-but-cant-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=4512","title":{"rendered":"Music You’ve Heard But Can’t Name"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leroy Anderson came up in conversation recently, and I remarked that his orchestral compositions are a perfect example of music that everybody’s heard but (almost) nobody can name. When you hear an Anderson piece, you think, Sure, everybody’s heard that!<\/em> But then you waste a minute or two trying to remember what it’s called. And you fail.<\/p>\n

There are exceptions. Anderson wrote “Sleigh Ride,” and although you may not remember the name of the composer, you damned well know the name of the song.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure what Leroy Anderson’s most-heard but least-named piece is, but I’d wager it’s “Fiddle Faddle.”<\/a> (If you like ants, here’s a video of ants walking around to “Fiddle Faddle.”<\/a> Don’t watch it if you don’t like bugs. Fits somehow, though, doesn’t it?) Second place may well go to “Blue Tango.”<\/a> with “Forgotten Dreams”<\/a> close behind. A lot of people know the name of “The Syncopated Clock,”<\/a> but fewer, I think, could name Anderson as the composer.<\/p>\n

My personal Anderson favorite may not be quite as well-known (It only made it to #180 of the Billboard annual tally–in 1953) but if you’re among the 50+ crowd, you’ve definitely heard it<\/a>. And the sound effects pretty much give it away. My grandmother gifted me her huge cast-iron Underwood typewriter in 1962, when I could barely lift it myself. I pounded on it for six years, until my godmother bought me a Smith-Corona electric in 1968. The Underwood Standard #5 hammered out a lot of my juvenalia during its tenure, but I’m pretty sure that it could not smack the platen anywhere near<\/em> fast enough to do justice to Anderson’s borderline-manic “The Typewriter.” This guy tries pretty hard<\/a>, though with a much smaller typewriter.<\/p>\n

Which leads me to wonder: How many people these days have ever actually heard<\/em> a manual typeriter, much less used one?<\/p>\n

As for un-nameable music, Leroy Anderson had no lock on the concept. I think a lot of people have heard at least portions of “The Light Cavalry Overture”<\/a> without knowing what it was. You’ll have to listen for a couple of minutes to get to the familiar part. But when you do, you’ll know it. It’s become a metaphor for slogging doggedly along, and in truth I like the other parts better. Ditto Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld Overture.”<\/a> You have to get about seven minutes into the work, but, then, yes, you’ve heard it a hundred times.<\/p>\n

Any others come to mind?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leroy Anderson came up in conversation recently, and I remarked that his orchestral compositions are a perfect example of music that everybody’s heard but (almost) nobody can name. When you hear an Anderson piece, you think, Sure, everybody’s heard that! But then you waste a minute or two trying to remember what it’s called. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[52,49],"class_list":["post-4512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ideasandanalysis","tag-culture","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4512"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4514,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4512\/revisions\/4514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}