The Earworm Thread

[smittims]

It's surely no wonder that sensitivity to music varies from person to person. My headmaster had no feeling for music whatever and could net even recognise the national anthem. Yet a friend told me her mother literaly burst into tears when hearing Barber's Adagio. What has always baffled me is how people can listen to Radio -One-style 'rock' music all day (builders, for instance). The only conclusion I can reach is that they aren't 'listening' to it as you or I would listen to Monteverdi or Shostakovitch. Yet the music that means most to people who aren't specialist listeners is the piece they associate with significant times in their lives . Hence programmes such as 'inheritance tracks' , where well-known people try to explain why some of the worst music I have ever heard is so valuable to them.

[Nick Armstrong]

Does anyone get earworms of bits of music that they haven't heard recently? That is, an earworm arriving apparently unprovoked?

Yes!

I had the opening timp motif from Britten’s violin concerto on the brain / in the ear for a day last week for no apparent reason and months since I last listened to it…

[kernelbogey]

...an earworm arriving apparently unprovoked?

I wonder if it's provoked by something we don't notice...? A smell, a sight or sound that is indirectly connected to having heard that theme on another occasion?

[vinteuil]

I wonder if it's provoked by something we don't notice...? A smell, a sight or sound that is indirectly connected to having heard that theme on another occasion?

... been readin' Proust, have we?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinteuil_Sonata

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_memory

[kernelbogey]

... been readin' Proust, have we?

Non - actually.

But I do think it's a common phenomenon. I was thinking of the the power of smell to transport us to another time.

[LMcD]

It's surely no wonder that sensitivity to music varies from person to person. My headmaster had no feeling for music whatever and could net even recognise the national anthem. Yet a friend told me her mother literaly burst into tears when hearing Barber's Adagio. What has always baffled me is how people can listen to Radio -One-style 'rock' music all day (builders, for instance). The only conclusion I can reach is that they aren't 'listening' to it as you or I would listen to Monteverdi or Shostakovitch. Yet the music that means most to people who aren't specialist listeners is the piece they associate with significant times in their lives . Hence programmes such as 'inheritance tracks' , where well-known people try to explain why some of the worst music I have ever heard is so valuable to them.

In my case, it's Vaughan Williams's Tallis Fantasia and Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21, but I don't know whether that makes me a 'specialist listener'.

[Ian Thumwood]

It's surely no wonder that sensitivity to music varies from person to person. My headmaster had no feeling for music whatever and could net even recognise the national anthem. Yet a friend told me her mother literaly burst into tears when hearing Barber's Adagio. What has always baffled me is how people can listen to Radio -One-style 'rock' music all day (builders, for instance). The only conclusion I can reach is that they aren't 'listening' to it as you or I would listen to Monteverdi or Shostakovitch. Yet the music that means most to people who aren't specialist listeners is the piece they associate with significant times in their lives . Hence programmes such as 'inheritance tracks' , where well-known people try to explain why some of the worst music I have ever heard is so valuable to them.

It is an interesting suggestion but too much of a generalisation. I was commenting on another thread about Rick Beato's podcasts which offer a lot of musical insight into what is happening musically in pop music. A recent broadcast this month made a strong case for Selina Carpenter's ' please, please ,please ' which featured an interesting modulation in rhe Bridge. I am a bit more open minded with music these days.

On the construction sites where I work, radios have been banned for over 20 years. Not heard RadioOne played on a site for over ten years when the site manager turned a blind eye to this.

Most people do not listen and analyse music. I think is something unique to classical music and jazz.

[oliver sudden]

I've not read the whole of this thread but I have been wondering about the following question (which may have been answered by some previous posts).

Does anyone get earworms of bits of music that they haven't heard recently? That is, an earworm arriving apparently unprovoked?

Oh dear yes, and they stick until I’ve worked out what they are. Once I had the second subject of the first movement of the Mozart “1st” horn concerto in my head intermittently for I think literally years until I heard a student play it in a class. That defused it. Another time it was a three-note oboe moment near the end of the exposition of the first movement of Prokofiev 6. Took me ages to work out what it was.

[Pulcinella]

Pestered yesterday by a La-la-la motif that, eventually (I need to check), I decided comes from the pantomime in The Rake's Progress, where Nick Shadow is demonstrating his bread-making machine.
A subliminal reminder that I needed to buy or make some bread for lunch here?

[smittims]

'I am a bit more open minded with music these days'.

...can this really be the same Ian Thumwood who said only recently that he was 'coming to hate Brahms'?

You didn't say which part of my post was a generalisation. It was, in fact, simply meant to convey my own summary impression of what I have heard, so inevitably that involves generalising. Surely there is a place for generalisation. Many wise sayings are generalisations.

[french frank]

Most people do not listen and analyse music. I think is something unique to classical music and jazz.

When we started FoR3 back c 2003 it was the way I saw people discussing jazz on the messageboard that made me certain that FoR3 must insist that jazz was essential to what Radio 3 provided (and also to suspect that there was 'R3 jazz' and 'R2 jazz'!). The fact that jazz doesn't interest me didn't prevent me defending it when there were those who wanted a 'classical only' R3 - and no popular music 'like jazz'. Discussions about pop music seem to focus disproportionately on the performers and topical news about them performers rather than on the music (certainly in any technical way).

[Serial_Apologist]

When we started FoR3 back c 2003 it was the way I saw people discussing jazz on the messageboard that made me certain that FoR3 must insist that jazz was essential to what Radio 3 provided (and also to suspect that there was 'R3 jazz' and 'R2 jazz'!). The fact that jazz doesn't interest me didn't prevent me defending it when there were those who wanted a 'classical only' R3 - and no popular music 'like jazz'. Discussions about pop music seem to focus disproportionately on the performers and topical news about them performers rather than on the music (certainly in any technical way).

That's coz there really ain't that much technically to talk about with pop music - that's my generalisation, at any rate!

[french frank]

That's coz there really ain't that much technically to talk about with pop music - that's my generalisation, at any rate!

Indeed, generalissimo. If there were, why isn't it? Or point me in the direction where it is: I am willing to learn :-)

[cloughie]

That's coz there really ain't that much technically to talk about with pop music - that's my generalisation, at any rate!

There was 60 years ago - that’s my generationalisation of the situation!

[kernelbogey]

That's coz there really ain't that much technically to talk about with pop music - that's my generalisation, at any rate!

Good Vibrations had the same seismic effect on twentieth-century popular music as Beethoven's 3rd symphony had on symphonic music. Discuss.