Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2022 December 29

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December 29

Identify music from score on Little Nemo

From Commons

The May 30, 1908 page of Little Nemo in Slumberland features the Slumberland Palace Band playing a tune represented by its score. Nemo says:

Isn't that a pretty piece? Seems like I heard it before, somewhere. It is fine!

May, a poor girl Nemo has found before, says:

I heard it too, but just where I don't know unless at the opera.

I can't read music scores, but it should be easy to decode for you. Maybe then, you recognize it if it was popular in 1908. Knowing that, perhaps you can point me somewhere online where I can hear that tune. The Comic Strip Library displays the page in "high resolution". --Error (talk) 16:30, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

The page is in Commons. Ehem. --Error (talk) 16:37, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

It looks very much like part of Yankee Doodle, with slight changes to the rhythm. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 18:33, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, looks like a nice ending to a Yankee Doodle march. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 20:57, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

I made an attempt at transcribing it:

My LilyPond chops are not quite up to the task of replicating the exact notation, but this is pretty close. To me this whole extract sounds like an accompaniment part. Shells-shells (talk) 03:35, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, like accompaniment to "Yankee Doodle". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:46, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Last few notes of Davy Crockett

The last few words of the song Davy Crockett (in the first verse) are "king of the wild frontier". In the Disney Sing-Along Songs Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah these words are sung to the notes C-C-C-B♭-G-F (with the C's being the C an octave above middle C.) But all Internet sites talking about this song's melody, as well as Hal-Leonard's "Best Children's Songs Ever", say that these words have the notes C-C-C-E-G-F (with the C's being middle C.) Why the mismatching melodies?? Georgia guy (talk) 16:58, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Link to the moment in the Sing-Along Songs: [1]. I don't hear what you are hearing, but note it is sung by a choir of several voices. The chord on the word "wild" in the setting – presumably the original – seen here is, from bottom to top, C-G-B♭-E.  --Lambiam 11:33, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

See also SATB. I suspect that the two transcriptions are written for different voice types. Most children, regardless of gender, generally sing in a very high register, and the music from your Disney transcription is likely to be written so as to be comfortable for them to sing. The Hal-Leonard transcription chose a different range to write in, apparently, perhaps the tenor range, which would have different notes within the harmony of the song. Since the chorus of the song was originally written in multi-part harmony, both melodies work fine. It should be noted that both of these books are likely in the form of a "fake sheet", and not a full score; which means they likely contain only a single melody line and possibly some chord notation for the purposes of working out harmony. When transcribing for a fake sheet, each transcriber make take some liberties with the original score for various reasons. --Jayron32 13:53, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

In the Sing-Along Songs version more like TTBB.  --Lambiam 17:11, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough, I was using it as an example of vocal harmony, as representative but not exhaustive. My main point had not much to do with that except to note that musical transcriptions written by different authors, for different settings, may use different melodies within the same harmonic context. That kind of thing happens all the time; the original score may be authoritative in some sense, but many "song books" written for popular consumption aren't scores, they are simplified lead sheets, and choices made on how to transcribe musical works are rife with differences. --Jayron32 05:11, 5 January 2023 (UTC)