Tuesday, April 14, 2009

What's in a Tune? - The Power of Music...

I mused this morning over the pandemic nature, the omnipresence of music, and how intrinsically it is fused into our consciousness -
Although Wagner's music influenced Hitler's sense of what his world goals should be, it may be of interest to note that his favorite pop tune was "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?", because he liked the nick-name given him and used by his close circle of friends; namely Wolf.
A tune that was sung in English by the British soldiers and in German by the German troops, both during World War II, was " Lili Marlene." Both sides were attracted by the nostalgia and depicting of love in this tune.
Again; in English in this country, and in German in Hitler's young dictatorship, the tune "Happy Days Are Here Again", and sung for the same reason; namely, a musical escape from the reality of the Great Depression, and the hopes of both the German people under the new leader Hitler and the Americans with the new President Roosevelt - it was a parallel expression in diametrically opposed cultures.
Mozart takes a well-known tune and creates a delightful set of variations around it; namely,"Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star".
Pilots of the vaunted P-51 Mustang, the brilliantly designed fighter-escort plane in World War II, was so coveted by its pilots, that most, if not veritably all of those flying this defining plane thought of this brilliant piece of engineering as their very own. Actually, it is known that one of the pilots named his plane "Baby Mine", a tune out of Walt Disney's Classic cartoon "Dumbo", which was released during this period. The tune was that sung by the mother of the little elephant called Dumbo.
A pretty young teen-ager of average talent, a student of Beethoven, becomes immortalized by Beethoven's writing of a little piece titled "Fur Elise".
And on and on - other examples exist; however, you probably feel that you have read enough!

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