Monday, January 14, 2013

Ear Worms

Yes, you read that right.  Ear worms.  Those little snippets of songs, or sometimes entire songs that get themselves lodged in your ear and cannot be exorcised by any means but the passage of tine.  Or perhaps the introduction of a new tune. 
Everyone has their pet offenders.  Some of the most common (and most noxious, be warned!) are:
"It's A Small World After All"
"Puff, the Magic Dragon"
"There is a Bad Moon on the Rise"
"The Pirate's Life For Me"
And I am sure there are thousands of others you could think of that have not occurred to me at this moment.  (Now, please, no hate mail for bringing up those Disney gems that really do get FIRMLY stuck in one's ear.  I was making a rhetorical point.)
Today I have been suffering from a rather obscure little ear worm.  This one was hatched by the Alan Parsons Project in the late 1970s.  It is a musical setting of one of Poe's most famous poems: The Raven.

Since hearing the piece on my Pandora feed this morning, the last verse has been cycling through my head most of the day.
"And so the raven remains in my room
No matter how much I implore.
No words can soothe him
No prayer remove him
So I must hear for evermore...
Nevermore!"

Sometimes these things are just plain annoying, at other times, they can be useful.  I have often had difficult bits of choral pieces or even some operatic arias that I have been fussing over run themselves repeatedly through my head.  Often, this actually helps me learn the difficult bits of a piece.  (But only if I can somehow cement the relevant bit of music into my brain.)
One of these is a series of runs from So Anch'io La Virtu Magica, a  piece from Donizetti's setting of Don Pasquale.  It is lovely, especially the very first section.  The rest of it is also lovely, but a bit of a tongue twister AND filled with pitfalls for the unwary vocalist.  If I can but manage to get a few of those difficult bits into my subconscious, I shall be able to polish them up without actively working on them.  That is the only USEFUL service provided by an "ear worm".

Off and on over the years of voice lessons, many arias have been ear worms for me.  The most persistent is the one I have to use to call the cat.  "Deh vieni, non tardar" is what I must sing if I wish to summon the cat.  Madame is VERY particular, and will come for nothing else.  No "kitty, kitty," or calling by her name (neither Skye nor Madame Skye, or Madame) will bring her.  If Matt wishes to summon her, he must flip the drawer pull on his desk where he keeps the string she likes to play with.  That is the only other thing she will stir herself for.  So, Deh vieni is often heard in our house, and is consequently often stuck in my mind.    Some days, Dove sono i bei momenti , also from Nozze Di Figaro, runs around in my head.  Opera ear worms are sometimes less trying than pop music or Disney ear worms. 
The worst of course, can be hymns as ear worms.  You then begin to wonder if Someone is trying to tell you something because this one particular hymn keeps running in your head over an over.  Church anthems have the same effect.  I begin to wonder if their is Someone trying to beat me over the head with a point they wish to make.

So, now I wonder if I will hear from any of you what ear worms haunt your existence and spoil your dreams? 

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