The Earworm Thread

[Richard Barrett]

One of the odd things about shall we say "classical" earworms is that everything gets connected up in the wrong way, and sometimes even some earwormy bit from one piece gets connected to another one from a different piece, different composer/period/style etc.

[Joseph K]

Various excerpts from Miles Davis's Petit Machins have been spinning in my head today and recently.

[vinteuil]

One of the odd things about shall we say "classical" earworms is that everything gets connected up in the wrong way, and sometimes even some earwormy bit from one piece gets connected to another one from a different piece, different composer/period/style etc.

... I'm not sure I understand this - tho' I feel there might be something interesting behind it. Could you be more specific - some examples?

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[Serial_Apologist]

... I'm not sure I understand this - tho' I feel there might be something interesting behind it. Could you be more specific - some examples?

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Only today, listening to the Britten Violin Concerto, there were various points at which it could quite harmoniously have transitioned into the various influences on aural display: Bartok's two violin concertos, Prokofiev's second, and one of Shostakovitch's, can't remember which at the moment. Sometimes when "earworming" a particular work I find it naturally heading to something else by another composer, then wondering what both composers might have thought about such juxtapositioning!

[Bryn]

Only today, listening to the Britten Violin Concerto, there were various points at which it could quite harmoniously have transitioned into the various influences on aural display: Bartok's two violin concertos, Prokofiev's second, and one of Shostakovitch's, can't remember which at the moment. Sometimes when "earworming" a particular work I find it naturally heading to something else by another composer, then wondering what both composers might have thought about such juxtapositioning!

Quodlibetter than some, I suppose.

[Richard Barrett]

Yes, S_A and vinteuil, that's exactly the sort of thing I meant. I can't think of a specific example just now though.

[vinteuil]

Sometimes when "earworming" a particular work I find it naturally heading to something else by another composer, then wondering what both composers might have thought about such juxtapositioning!

... that seems to me to flow from our human tendency to (over-) find patterns in things rather than anything innate in such ear-worms

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

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

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[Richard Barrett]

... that seems to me to flow from our human tendency to (over-) find patterns in things rather than anything innate in such ear-worms

No doubt. But if two pieces involve for example a very similar cadence, the mind easily hops from one to the other in a way that it wouldn't automatically do between arbitrarily chosen fragments. Also I think it might be characteristic of earworms that if they involve some kind of structural repeat there's no limit to how many times it might "loop".

[Serial_Apologist]

... that seems to me to flow from our human tendency to (over-) find patterns in things rather than anything innate in such ear-worms

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

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

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I would have thought it had something to do with seeking affinity or affinities between things which "really" might be there between the things themselves, or at least analogous. We are mediated by divisions and subdivisions, resulting from the habit of starting from categories treated as fundamental realities, which may stand in the way of dealing with unexpected eventualities and have ways of catching us unawares. Like the apocryphal man shot through with an arrow refusing to have it removed until he knows everything there is to be known about his assailant. Any belief system is by definition not implicit* - which is what I would, as diplomatically as possible, tell a person who believed he or she had seen Jesus in glowing embers, or heard Beethoven or speak telepathically through a later composer - notwithstanding notorious cases of previously unlearned people spontaneously being enabled to play undiscovered Beethoven or Liszt on the piano.

Tendencies to see connections are a good thing so long as taken, not literally, but by way of compensating for over-analytical dependency. It would be nice were they to be true, but I wouldn't be putting my money on it!

*(By that I probably mean Sartre's term "contingent").

[pastoralguy]

Mrs. PG and I wondered why the riff from The White Stripes ‘Seven Nation Army’ gets sung whenever a goal is scored in the current European championships. It’s developed into a real ear worm for us and we find ourselves humming it at odd times.

[Sir Velo]

Monteverdi's madrigal Vago augelletto has burrowed deep into my auditory receptors recently. Alessandrini's version is voluptuously irresistible.

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I should have added the caveat, do not click on the link unless you want to be similarly afflicted!

[gradus]

For some unaccountable reason my ears keep playing Sibelius's Melisande from P&M, it's the cor anglais solo and answering strings that have hooked me.

[Jonathan]

Currently, the opening title music from "The Orville", on repeat, all the time!

[Petrushka]

At the moment it's the Mozart Symphony No 32 endlessly repeating! I've not heard it recently so no idea why it's burrowed its way in.

[Beresford]

For me the most annoying earworm is Rossini's Thieving Magpie. I don't particularly like or dislike it, but it takes at least half an hour of my favourite music to displace it.