Strange Music Titles

[The Six]

Has anyone ever heard Nam June Paik's Young Penis Symphony?

I did, but I hear the uncut version has more feeling.

[Luke]

 

[Luke]

Walter Zimmermann - As a Wife Has a Cow
And there are dozens by Gavin Bryars, such as (for starters)
  - Marvellous Aphorisms Are Scattered Richly Throughout These Pages.
  - One Last Bar Then Joe Can Sing
  - Out of Zaleski's Gazebo
  - Poggioli in Zaleski's Gazebo
  - Serenely Beaming And Leaning On a Five-Barred Gate
  - The Ride Cymbal And The Band That Caused The Fire In The Sycamore Trees
  - The Squirrel And The Ricketty-Racketty Bridge
  - To Gain The Affections Of Miss Dwyer Even For One Short Minute Would Benefit Me No End

[UB]

Luke I thought you had made some of those Bryars up but you didn't.

I found this one and would like to hear the opera.

"G, Being the Confession and Last Testament of Johannes Gensfleisch, also known as Gutenberg, Master Printer, formerly of Strasbourg and Mainz."

I did not know he had written a full scale opera. Has anyone heard it?

[greg]

I like the G3 live performance of My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama...

not sure Debussy would like the first one on that list.

[mikkeljs]

Ib Nørholm:

´Vejledning for den gyldne hamster´

which means

´Guide for (not to) the golden hamster´

and it comes from a piece of text Nørholm came across. It´s an atonal noisy piece for brass orchestra.

[Popov]

Kagel - Interview aver D. pour Monsieur Croche et Orchestre
Globokar - Hallo! Do you hear me?
Romitelli - Professor Badtrip
Mestres Quadreny - Micos i papallones (Monkeys and Butterflies)
Camarero - Instrucciones para dejarse caer al otro lado del vacío (Instructions to drop yourself onto the other side of void)

[snyprrr]

I have decided my String Quartet will be called SUESS.

What do you think? The smoothness of the curves were to relate to the music. It is not based on the children's author, it was just the word that seemed to sum up tghe sound of an SQ I would have wanted to write.

SUESS

Iliiiike it!

[not edward]

It's certainly a strange way to spell Seuss.

[Superhorn]

  How about this?  Janacek- Music For Indian Club Swinging.

[UB]

On the same program with Riley's nudes....

Jonathan Nangle: our headlights blew softly into the black

[vandermolen]

The angel on the garbage heap

[oabmarcus]

Once when we were young, a friend of mine came to my house and told me that I was some kind of perv because i happened to have a disc of Beethoven's 3rd symphony "Erotica" lying on my bed.

[Popov]

The first of Miguel Ángel Coria's (1937) Two Pieces for Piano is called Ravel for President. This composer is little known nowadays but he had a name in the Spanish avantgarde in the 1970-80s. Many of his shorter pieces have amusing titles such as this, Falla revisited, J'ai perdu ma plume dans le jardin de Turina or A humble proposal so that Spanish composers won't starve to death.



It's not entirely related to the thread, but here's an amusing anecdote: in 1998 Josep Soler composed a piece inspired by Sibelius' Scene with Cranes from Kuolema, and he decided to title it "Paisaje con cráneos" (Landscape with Skulls). He thought crane meant cráneo (skull, cranium).

This proves you don't need to know English to be awarded the Spanish National Music Prize

[snyprrr]

Schnittke's piece about "all the verses filled with grief"??

[snyprrr]

Xenakis:

Oophaa
Roscobeck
Hunem-Iduhey
Ittidra
Zythos (apparently named after beer!)

[snyprrr]

I have decided any piece I might write is going to have a unique Title. I'm working on Titles such as:

Tkilliktikilli

Oommoeuma

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Yeah I love those Xenakis titles. Like someone got their fingers caught in a typewriter!

Sallinen: Some Aspects of Hintrik Peltoniemi's Funeral March

This one mystifies me on more than one level. Why only "some" aspects - why not ALL the aspects? And who is this guy Hintrik, and why are we listening to his funeral march? And to make matters more confusing, apparently this is a string-orchestrated excerpt from a string quartet. We're not getting the whole story!

Vaughan Williams: March Past of the Kitchen Utensils

From The Wasps music, so I assume it has some explicable dramatic origin. Great title anyway.

[Grazioso]

John Adams:

I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky
Nixon in China
Studebaker Love Music

Arvo Pärt:

Wenn Bach Bienen gezüchtet hätte (If Bach Had Been a Beekeeper)

[Ten thumbs]

I suppose Satie was the father of this kind of title. The trouble is that having let the genie out of the bottle, it is now impossible to be original in this respect. All we have is posturing.
For the record, I repeat an entry I put under humour:
A deliberate joke by Bonis: Op. 174 under the pseudonym 'Fricoto Pusslink'
Two songs under the title 'Vestiare' (Cloakroom)
1 L'éléphant
2 Championnat (Championship)