Name That Annoying Tune
When I was driving to Harris Teeter to buy some kielbasa earlier this afternoon I caught a snatch of an orchestral piece on the radio. I recognized it but couldn't place it -- light, jazz-flavored, castanets -- was it Gerswhin's Cuban Overture? No, that doesn't have these Ives-lite polytonal contrasting sections... It wasn't good, really, and wasn't even really that interesting, but I was curious. I'd heard about four minutes of it by the time I got to the grocery store and the piece sounded like it was almost over, so I figured I'd wait in the parking lot until it finished so I could hear what it was.
The piece was not in fact almost over and the car became very hot very fast, even with the door cracked, so the music became increasingly maddening to me. It was put together like the world's worst rondo, with the peppy yet grating main theme playing for a couple minutes, then a slightly darker section or two for another couple minutes, then that main theme again. And again. By the time the piece actually did finish (without much fanfare, as though it had merely run out of music) I was sweating and thinking various angry thoughts (mainly "Just stop! You haven't had an original musical idea for eight minutes!")
End. Applause. Wave of relief. Mystery answer: Milhaud's Le Boeuf sur le Toit. Dammit! I already knew I didn't like that piece at all. At least I feel confirmed in my opinion. So let me just reiterate as a public service message: Do not listen to Le Boeuf sur le Toit. It's an irritating and structurally dull little oddity of a composition. I'll add that ten minutes in a sun-baked parking lot waiting for it to end doesn't help it any.
The piece was not in fact almost over and the car became very hot very fast, even with the door cracked, so the music became increasingly maddening to me. It was put together like the world's worst rondo, with the peppy yet grating main theme playing for a couple minutes, then a slightly darker section or two for another couple minutes, then that main theme again. And again. By the time the piece actually did finish (without much fanfare, as though it had merely run out of music) I was sweating and thinking various angry thoughts (mainly "Just stop! You haven't had an original musical idea for eight minutes!")
End. Applause. Wave of relief. Mystery answer: Milhaud's Le Boeuf sur le Toit. Dammit! I already knew I didn't like that piece at all. At least I feel confirmed in my opinion. So let me just reiterate as a public service message: Do not listen to Le Boeuf sur le Toit. It's an irritating and structurally dull little oddity of a composition. I'll add that ten minutes in a sun-baked parking lot waiting for it to end doesn't help it any.
1 Comments:
Yep, you're right about all that. I can't think of another piece of classical music that's so inexplicably popular, or even remotely popular.
Also, that piece is about twenty minutes long, so you only heard half of it. (Anyone curious about how this sounds can get the gist of it here.)
The name is more interesting than the music: "Le Boeuf Sur le Toit" means "The Cow on the Roof," which is a reference to the name (or maybe just decor) of a particular bar in Brazil that Milhaud was acquainted with. If only the piece itself came off that wacky.
Back when I had the Green Car, the piece that kept me inside once waiting for it to end was Mark O'Connor's Fiddle Concerto. That's got some great music in it, but it's too long, and the last movement (kind of like the Milhaud piece) is some sort of rondo that feels like it's fixing to conclude for about the last ten minutes of the piece.
O'Connor's part of the folk/classical crossover set behind "Appalachia Waltz", and it's not surprising that large-scale form is the toughest thing for him to pull off as a composer. Though his colleague Edgar Meyer, the Nashville-raised double-bassist, does this a lot better in the concertos he's written.
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