Bobby Darin's "Down with Love"

I'm listening to a compilation of Bobby Darin titled Mighty, Mighty Man.  It includes "Down with Love."  One of the lines is "Down with songs that moan about night and day."  I'm fairly certain that this is a reference to Cole Porter's song "Night and Day," which I have performed by many different artists (including Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra).

The first few lines of "Night and Day" are:

Night and day you are the one
Only you beneath the moon and under the sun
Whether near to me or far
It's no matter, darling, where you are
I think of you day and night

The whole song has declarations of love like this, which is exactly the sort of thing that "Down with Love" rails against.

Mozart's Requiem

I'm still making my way through The Argo Years, the 28-disc box set of Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.  To-night, it was Mozart's Requiem.  I hadn't heard this particular recording before, but I do have it performed by Orchestra e Coro della RAI.

The first few notes of the Benedictus sounded familiar, and it didn't take me too long to discover that I'd heard them in the second movement of Mendelssohn's Organ Sonata in A major, Op. 65, No. 3.  (I just listened to Peter Hurford's recording a couple days ago.)

I wasn't sure how similar they were, so I looked up the music for both of them:

(notation found here and here)

The note values and time signatures are different, and the melodies don't really resemble each other after the fifth note, but the notes do occur in the same intervals (even if they're in different keys).

However, I'm not sure if this was intentional on Mendelssohn's part.

Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 107 "Reformation"

I've been making my way through some Mendelssohn lately.  To-day that included the later symphonies, performed by the Wiener Philharmoniker directed by Christoph von Dohnányi.

I feel pretty stupid for not noticing this earlier, but the fourth movement of Symphony No. 5 includes some variations on Martin Luther's "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."  It becomes glaringly obvious once the name ("Reformation") is taken into account.

Additionally, I think Mendelssohn may have also included a few measures of the melody from "Ich Sterbe Täglich," a tune from 1756 that is also used for hymns (such as "I Come, O Savior, to Thy Table" and "Thy Body, Given for Me, O Savior"), so it also relates to the religious theme of the symphony.

At the eleventh measure of section I*, the melody comes in with the bassoons and trumpets:

(notation found here)

A measure or two after this, the melody diverges, but it's enough to recognize it.

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*I might not be using the correct terminology; I never really learned to read scores.  It took me long enough to actually find the particular measures.

Buddy Holly's "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man"

I started listening to Buddy Holly's three-disc Memorial Collection to-day.  I'm currently on the first disc.  I noticed something interesting in his version of "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man."  Right after the lines "Well two-three the count, and nobody on / He hit a high fly into the stand," there's a drum hit that differs from what Jerry Allison (the drummer) had been playing.  Apparently, that hit is supposed to represent the bat hitting the ball - the high fly into the stand that the brown-eyed handsome man hits.

I think it's important to note that Buddy Holly also does this in "I'm Looking for Someone to Love."  There's a sudden drum hit after "foot slip" in the line "Drunk man, street car, foot slip, there you are."

According to the liner notes, "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" was recorded sometime between December 1956 and January 1957, and "I'm Looking for Someone to Love" on 25 February 1957, so it seems that after inserting that musical detail into his Chuck Berry cover, Holly incorporated it into one of his own songs.

Mendelssohn's Prelude and Fugue in G major, Op. 37, No. 2

I'm staying up late listening to some Mendelssohn organ works performed by Peter Hurford.  I noticed in the fugue part of his Prelude and Fugue in G major, Op. 37, No. 2, he sneaks in the B-A-C-H motif... sort of:

(notation found here)

In the second measure here, (skipping the first note) it's G to F# and then C to B.  While this isn't the Bb A C B of the B-A-C-H motif, it's still the same sort of paradigm.  He has a half-step from G to F# and then a half-step from C to B.  Two sequential half-steps are also heard in other places in the work (assuming I'm hearing them correctly), although I didn't look those up in the notation, so I don't know if they're also G to F# and C to B or if they're comprised of other notes.

Among the little I know of Mendelssohn is that he promoted Bach's music and was something of a Bach revivalist, so it makes sense that Bach's musical signature would - in some form - find its way into his music, especially his organ works.

Charles Ives' Symphony No. 3 "The Camp Meeting"

I just listened to the seventeenth disc of Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields' The Argo Years for the first time.  It includes Charles Ives' Symphony No. 3 "The Camp Meeting."  I'd never heard this before, but I did recognize a melody at the very end of the first movement "Old Folks Gatherin'."  It took me awhile to figure out what it was, but I eventually discovered that it's an adaptation of the melody of "Azmon," written by Carl G. Gläser.  (Apparently, "Azmon" is often used for hymns.  I know it through "Awake, O Sleeper, Rise from Death," which I recorded back in April for a different musical project I'm doing [if I hadn't, it would have taken me a lot longer to identify this melody], and it's also used for "The Savior Calls; Let Every Ear.")

According to the liner notes for The Argo Years, Ives lived from 1874 to 1954, and my hymnal says that Gläser lived from 1784 to 1829.  So Ives is quoting Gläser's work rather than the other way around.

I don't know anything about Gläser or Ives, so I can't really comment on Ives' quoting Gläser.  The only thing I can do is note it.

The Beatles' "Here, There, and Everywhere"

Because I just finished re-reading Robert Rodriguez's Revolver: How the Beatles Reimagined Rock 'n' Roll, I'm listening to Revolver.  I'd noticed the line "but to love her is to need her" in "Here, There, and Everywhere," but it wasn't until listening to it now that I realized the reference behind it.

"To love her is to need her" is an extra step started by the line "to know her is to love her" - the title line of "To Know Her Is to Love Her," which was covered by the Beatles on the BBC (and which appears on the Live at the BBC album).  The song was originally written by Phil Spector as "To Know Him Is To Love Him," apparently inspired by the words on Spector's father's gravestone, which goes well with the "death and isolation" theme that Rodriguez traces through Revolver.

Additionally, the song was recorded by Peter & Gordon as "To Know You Is to Love You."  McCartney also had connections to Peter & Gordon - he dated Peter Asher's sister Jane Asher and wrote a few songs for Peter & Gordon.

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I also wrote an-other post on "Here, There, and Everywhere," but it wasn't related to listening to it, merely by comments Rodriguez made in the book, so I've not included it here.

The Beatles' "Blue Jay Way"

I'm currently listening to the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour.  On "Blue Jay Way," George Harrison's vocals (and some of the backing vocals, too) are kind of wobbly, which I'd never noticed before.  I think they did the same thing they did with "Tomorrow Never Knows" from Revolver about a year earlier and put the vocals through a Leslie speaker.  "Blue Jay Way" also features organ, which was frequently (I might even say, "usually") put through a Leslie speaker, so it doesn't seem too unlikely that they'd use the same thing for the vocals.

Ray Charles' "Ain't That Fine"

I'm currently listening to a live album of Ray Charles.  The first track is "Ain't That Fine."  One of the lines is "But my baby beats de Milo 'cause she's got a pair of arms."

This reminded me of an-other song that mentions the Venus de Milo - Chuck Berry's "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man."  Although he pronounces it more like "Marlow," so the verse is:

Marlow Venus was a beautiful lass
She had the world in the palm of her hand
She lost both her arms in a wrestling match
To meet a brown-eyed handsome man

I'm not sure if Chuck Berry mentioned the statue in his song in reference to the Ray Charles song, but Grecian art doesn't seem to be a very common topic in popular music, so I would think it's more likely to be a reference than just a coincidence.

The Beach Boys' "Car Crazy Cutie"

I'm currently listening to the Beach Boys' Little Deuce Coupe/All Summer Long (the reissue with both albums on one CD).  The backing vocals on "Car Crazy Cutie" from Little Deuce Coupe are "Run run a do run run," which isn't too far from the title (and backing vocals) of the Crystals' "Da Doo Ron Ron."  Additionally, "Da Doo Ron Ron" was produced by Phil Spector, whose productions Brian Wilson was interested in.

John Lennon's "Imagine"

I'm currently listening to a compilation album of John Lennon.  I'd never noticed the sort of expanding nature of the piano at the beginning of "Imagine."  It starts out sounding distant but still centered, and then after about fifteen seconds, it fills out the sonic sphere, so to speak.  It works well as a musical representation of the border pushing that the lyrics relate.

Ritchie Valens' "Now You're Gone"

A few days ago, I listened to a compilation album of Ritchie Valens.  I really like his "Now You're Gone," so I decided to learn how to play it.  I think I figured it out one other time (or at least figured out most of it) because I sort of remembered it.

In any case, I learned some cool things about it.  First, it starts off with a key change... sort of.  It starts in C# minor (for three chords) but then changes key to E major.  They contain all the same notes though, so I'm not sure if it's technically a key change.

Second, while it is mostly a three-chord song, it has E major 6ths, which I don't think is something that's all too common in 1950s songs.

EDIT: I'd been playing this with a capo on the 2nd fret, so all of the chords I said are relative to the capo.  It actually starts in D# minor and changes key to F# major.  And it contains an F# major 6th.  So even aside from the sudden key change and major 6th chords, there's something else distinctive about it - it's in an unusual key compared to most 1950s songs.

Jerry Lee Lewis' "Jailhouse Rock"

To-day I'm listening to a two-disc set of Jerry Lee Lewis.  It includes his version of Leiber and Stoller's "Jailhouse Rock," which I found something possibly interesting about.  Elvis Presley's version (the original) has the lines as:

Number 47 said to Number 3,
"Well you're the cutest jailbird I ever did see
I sure would be delighted with your company
Come on and do the jailhouse rock with me."

But Jerry Lee Lewis' version has it as "I sure would be delighted if you'd come with me."  It's not that big of a difference, and it retains the same meaning, but I still think it's interesting to note.  Especially because most of the inadvertent lyric changes I've come across are in British bands' covers of Americans' songs.

George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess

Yester-day, I listened to George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess performed by the Bethlehem Orchestra.  I noticed a few things.

In "Clara, Clara, Don't You Be Down-Hearted," I noticed some structural parallelism in the lyrics:  "Clara, Clara, don't you be down-hearted" parallels with "Clara, Clara, don't you be sad and lonesome."  A lot of the Psalms are written this way (with two lines saying almost the same thing but with synonyms), and since there are quite a few religious references in the opera (especially "Oh, doctor Jesus," which not only has religious references but is chanted more than sung, recalling a liturgy and therefore strengthening those connections), I would guess that that parallelism is a conscious echo of that style of writing.

I also noticed some interesting trumpet parts in "Narration (Scene: crap game and murder)."  After the narrator says, "She [Bess] doesn't want to be left alone with the body of Robins when the police arrive," one of the trumpets has a passage that sounds like a police siren.

A few seconds after the trumpet/police siren, there are the first four notes of "Dies Irae."  I think I'm becoming something of a boy-who-cried-wolf with the "Dies Irae," but it does fit the scene.  Furthermore, the narrator's line after those four notes is, "She's desperate," which seems to reflect the mood in the "Dies Irae" too.  Additionally, there's the religious connection with "Dies Irae" and some of the other elements of the opera.