Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2014 September 14

= September 14 =

Need help identifying a Paul Mauriat composition
The theme song of the 1982 Hong Kong TV series 痴情劫 (a.k.a. Love with Many Phases) was, I believe, composed by Paul Mauriat. Some suggested that it was specially composed for that theme song. On the other hand, comments on YouTube identified the music as a 1977 work entitled "Taste of Sorrow". I did some Web searches but I couldn't find any 1977 albums by Paul Mauriat that includes a track with that title. The references I found about "Taste of Sorrow" say it was released in 1983 and the composers were Paul Mauriat and Gérard Gambus.

My questions:


 * 1) Is the melody of the 痴情劫 theme from the composition "Taste of Sorrow"? (Clips of the 痴情劫 theme song can be found on YouTube.)
 * 2) Who composed the melody for the 痴情劫 theme song and when was it written?
 * 3) Was the melody originally composed for the theme song?

Thanks. --96.227.60.125 (talk) 16:04, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Double sharps and double flats
Two questions:


 * 1) When was the first use of a double sharp??
 * 2) When was the first use of a double flat??

The reason these questions are so interesting to compare is that while the double sharp has a special symbol; the double flat  is just 2 flat signs. I can easily conclude from this non-sequitur that the double flat is a newer invention. Georgia guy (talk) 17:46, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Apparently, they came about at the same time -- with the development of equal temperament. The main proponent of the saltire double-sharp symbol was Johann Mattheson; Leopold Mozart preferred an upright cross, and existing practice had been simply to use the note above. Mattheson also wanted to use β for the double flat, but it didn't catch on. --jpgordon:==( o ) 18:27, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Simply using the note above might also have taken some time to die out – you can find it as late as the slow movement of the Emperor Concerto (though I find this really inexplicable, given that by this time the double sharp was completely standard, and even more strongly because double sharps appear in the finale of the fourth concerto!) Looking at Beethoven piano concerto scores it looks as though he refrains from using double accidentals in the orchestral parts, but not in the piano part. May be composer-dependent though, because I haven't seen a single Mozart(!) work that avoids the double accidental when it is needed. Double sharp (talk) 13:43, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Late P.S.: An example in Mozart where the double accidental is avoided (and the note consequently spelt wrongly) can be found in the 2nd movement of the Trio KV 563. Double sharp (talk) 13:41, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh my, I'm now completely absorbed in that "Extremes" site. Thanks. --jpgordon:==( o ) 14:08, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you: it had the same effect on me when I first found it! :-P You might like this too, from the same site. Double sharp (talk) 14:24, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The last two posts confused the heck out of me, until it finally dawned on me that JPGordon was thanking Double sharp for a link provided at the bottom of this question. Occupational hazard of being left-brained, I guess.  Note to self: Must become less imperfect and more gestalt-oriented.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  19:59, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Ektually, I'd meant to put it on the very bottom and when I noticed it was in the wrong place, 𝄪 had already replied. --jpgordon:==( o ) 15:44, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Oh, so it's all his fault, eh. Yeah, yeah.  ....  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:54, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Never before has my username been this appropriate! :-D I would have liked to have the awesome username 𝄪 (if you can't see it, it's meant to look like ), but (1) that would have been problematic (I can't even see it on my screen, so how can I expect anyone else to?) and (2) for those who could see it, it would be confusing, looking too much like an "x". Double sharp (talk) 14:37, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

Something I'd really like to know, though, is: when was the first use of a triple sharp? A triple flat? The earliest triple sharp I know of is in Anton Reicha's 36 fugues (No. 34; C, b. 56, LH), published in 1803. The earliest triple flat I know of is in Nikolai Roslavets's first piano sonata (B; this wonderful resource helpfully informs me that it is in bb. 152–3), published in 1914. But the huge gap of over a century between these two seems improbable. Double sharp (talk) 13:53, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Arguably not a modern double sharp, but Benedetto Marcello's La stravaganza (SF A321) uses the modern "x"-like symbol on B's and E's repeatedly (see for example p.5 onwards; the top staff is in the soprano clef). However, the tonal context seems to indicate that the intended notes are just B♯ and E♯, and are just written this way because there is no key signature: the actual key seems to be, unbelievably, A-sharp minor, but with lots of enharmonic usage of B-flat minor to avoid true double accidentals (e.g. see beat 2 of bar 10 on p.5, where C would need to be written if not for the enharmonic flip!). Double sharp (talk) 14:29, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

(P.S. The piece is in quintuple meter (though it's not clear whether it's or ). At 1710 and clearly using modern Western musical notation, this piece then beats the current record listed on Don Byrd's "Extremes of Conventional Music Notation" site that I linked to above. Contributions are invited, so anyone who wants to can bring this example to his attention...he already knows about this piece, but seems to have missed that it would be a record.) Double sharp (talk) 14:29, 17 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Ah, yes, A-sharp minor. I've been on a quest to collect (at least the titles of) all pieces written in this mysterious key, and it's a vanishingly small list.  The real mystery, to me, is why it's considered so mysterious as to be totally ignored by virtually all composers, ever.  Even those who composed Music written in all 24 major and minor keys hardly ever considered it worthy of a guernsey.  Most people dismiss it churlishly with "It's equivalent to B-flat minor, which has 2 fewer accidentals, so why bother".  But that argument has never been used to stop people writing in C-sharp major, which has 2 more accidentals than its enharmonic equivalent D-flat major.  There has be a deeper reason than that.  Any clues?  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:45, 17 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Unreferenced guess. Part of the reason might be simply that the base note, B-flat, is such a common note. In German it's even only one letter, b (English B is h in German. "b" is the only odd one out. It's never called "hes", nor is h ever called "bis").
 * Instruments added to the symphony orchestra during and after the classical period included a number of transposing intruments tuned in B-flat and E-flat, and a lot of marching music and other brassy music favored these keys (which read as C or G to the trumpet players and alto clarinetists respectively). In German too, the word "ais" (A-sharp) is uttered almost as rarely as "eis" (E-sharp).
 * There may be other and hopefully less prosaic reasons, but I do thin that A-sharp's unfamiliarity when compared to B-flat has something to do with it. ---Sluzzelin talk  23:03, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
 * That explanation works for orchestral instruments, but not at all for the keyboard, which is unbothered by issues of transposition. A-sharp figures in the key signatures of B, F-sharp and C-sharp, both major and minor, making 6 in all (taking the accidentally raised leading note into account in the case of B minor).  True, the keys involving up to 4 sharps were traditionally far more favoured than those with 5 or more, but the 5-and-ups were certainly far from unknown.  Except A-sharp minor.  Keyboard composers show no general disinterest in G-flat major (7 flats) even though its equiv F-sharp major has one fewer accidental.  What is it about 7 sharps that makes C-sharp major fair game but A-sharp minor fit only for the dustbin?  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  23:46, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, I think you got my point, but that's no reason not to try to drive it home ;-) The difference is that C-sharp and D-flat are roughly at the same place on the familiar/unfamiliar or regular/arcane or unmysterious/esoteric scale while B-flat clearly is somewhere completely different than A-sharp. The example of orchestral instruments was merely an illustration. B-flat just is a note you encounter early (in your education) and everywhere in music, A-sharp isn't. C-sharp and D-flat lie somewhere in between, and are of roughly equal significance.
 * I'll concede the G-flat point. Perhaps there is a bias toward flats (which I would support arduously as someone who never quite mastered immediate in-the-head transposing when sight-reading non-transposed sheet music to be played on an E-flat instrument). ---Sluzzelin talk  23:55, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
 * G-flat major has 6 flats, and F-sharp major has 6 sharps. That one does seem to be evenly split. But I think there is a bias towards flats for minor keys especially, because (1) G-sharp, D-sharp, and A-sharp minor will need double sharps even in diatonic passages and (2) G-sharp, D-sharp, and A-sharp minor need a key signature change to flats if you're going to move to the parallel major and want to be legible. In major keys the need is less.
 * I reckon Sluzzelin is right about B♭ minor vs A♯ minor: B-flat is just that much more common. Also, A-sharp will need E-sharp as dominant, the second-most important note in the scale, when that could be expressed simply as just F! Even Alkan, who was famously rigorous about spelling notes correctly, made an exception specifically to avoid A-sharp minor in Op. 35 No. 9 (the key is C-sharp major, with some modulations into the relative minor, but these get written in B-flat minor, complete with an unbelievable torrent of flats and double-flats neutralizing the entire key signature twice over). (Maybe this isn't conclusive, though, because he has no qualms about entering A-sharp major for some time in Op. 33.) Double sharp (talk) 08:57, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Is C-sharp major so much more common than A-sharp minor generally speaking? There's this example and a few others such as the two prelude and fugue from the 48 but what else besides? In any case the rarity of one enharmonic key over the other (within reason: we're talking keys with no more than 7 accidentals: why B-flat major is always used and not A-sharp major requires no explanation), could partly result from a historical accident. Why is D-sharp minor so much more uncommon than E-flat minor? (Oddly in book 1 there's one prelude and fugue where the prelude is in E-flat minor while the fugue is in D-sharp minor: any idea why that would be? In book 2 both prelude and fugue are in D-sharp minor). If few works are written in a given key to begin with then that key doesn't acquire a well defined character or "color" and so even fewer composers will choose it and so on. Some 19th c. writers on music attempted to associate adjectives and keys in order to describe the feel of a key and for some keys (presumably for those keys that had been too rarely used to have acquired a definite character) they seem to have been at a loss for words. For example the four keys Albert Lavignac (in his work La musique et les musiciens) is unable to describe in this way are C-sharp major, C-flat major, A-sharp minor and (not A-flat minor which he describes as "lugubre, angoissé" but) D-sharp minor.
 * Contact Basemetal   here  17:04, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
 * C♯ major is definitely much more common than A♯ minor. Here's a list of 48 works in C-sharp major. (If you're curious, this collection contains 61 in A-flat minor, 48 in C-sharp major, 10 in C-flat major, and 2 in A-sharp minor.) There's also some works that pass through C-sharp major (even using the key signature): e.g. Liszt's sixth Hungarian Rhapsody, Schubert's sonata D.960 (II), Haydn's(!) C-sharp minor sonata (III).
 * My guess re D♯ minor is that it would need double accidentals more frequently than its enharmonic equivalent. Double sharp (talk) 06:01, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Does he describe F♯ major differently from G♭ major? G♯ minor from A♭ minor? Double sharp (talk) 10:15, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
 * G-sharp minor and A-flat minor are described in somewhat similar terms: G-sharp as "très sombre" and, like I said, A-flat as "lugubre, angroissé". But F-sharp major and G-flat major are described in diametrically opposite ways, the first as "rude" (rough) and the other as "doux et calme". Incidentally this list is in the Albert Lavignac Wikipedia article. That article mentions that Berlioz and Gevaert also have such lists in their respective works about orchestration but I'm not familiar with them. You can browse through Lavignac's work here or here. The particular list we're talking about is page 424. The Gevaert and Berlioz works mentioned can also probably be found on the web. Contact Basemetal   here  10:52, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The F-sharp/G-flat distance is perhaps a bit psychological as well (raising vs. lowering), and may have made even more sense before equal temperament. I personally like F-sharp major better, as it makes the parallel minor realm less unreadable, and the relative minor still tolerable. Off the top of my head, the only pieces in D♯ minor I can think of are that infamous Scriabin étude (Op. 8 No. 12), the second of Lyapunov's set of transcendental etudes, and Alkan's Op. 33, second movement (which ends in F♯ major). It's really not commonly used; of course A-sharp minor is still more uncommon. It seems as though A-flat minor is the most-used of the seven-accidental keys, perhaps because its enharmonic requires a double sharp for a diatonic note (F). A-sharp minor would compound this with both F and G, and maybe that's another reason why almost nobody ever uses that. Double sharp (talk) 12:56, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Rock drummers
This may be two questions but here goes. Who is the black drummer who plays with rock bands such as Dave Gilmour, Paul McCartney and who isn't Abe Laboriel? Or if anyone is watching the Jeff Lynne concert on BBC/Proms in the Park, who's the drummer? TammyMoet (talk) 19:44, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Just for clarification, you're looking for a drummer who plays with Gilmour and/or McCartney but is NOT Abe Laboriel, Jr.? -- Jayron  32  19:49, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Donavan Hepburn was on the drums for Jeff Lynne at Hyde Park and also Children in Need 2013. He's a session musician who has worked with Take That, Olly Murs, Adele, Cheryl Cole, Robbie Williams, Alesha Dixon, James Morrison amongst others. Nanonic (talk) 20:03, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Donovan Hepburn looks like the guy I am seeing when watching some videos of recent Jeff Lynne performances. Being large with dark skin, he's also easy to confuse (at a quick glance) with Laboriel Jr.  Perhaps that's who Tammy is looking at.  -- Jayron  32  20:07, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
 * He's also a Yamaha sponsored artist along with McCartney and others which could explain them working together occasionally. Nanonic (talk) 20:09, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The other thought I had was Carter Beauford, another African American rock drummer; though I'd not ever seen him play with McCartney, Gilmour, or Lynne. I do think Nanonic has it right; I think the drummer definitely is Hepburn.  -- Jayron  32  20:10, 14 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes I think Donovan Hepburn is the one I was looking at. Thank you all so much. And that's the explanation for what I remembered about McCartney et al - would never have guessed that. --TammyMoet (talk) 14:05, 15 September 2014 (UTC)