Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2023 August 28

= August 28 =

Celebrity relationships
Bill Wyman's son from his first marriage married the mother of Bill Wyman's second wife. Are there any similar examples of convoluted celebrity relationships? --Viennese Waltz 07:39, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn. Xuxl (talk) 13:39, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
 * If you count Errol Musk as a celebrity, he has children with his step-daughter. I believe (as suggested by our articles), unlike with Previn and Allen where both of them say that he didn't have any real parental role in her life and only minimally interacted until she was about 20 (but still in school), it seems Errol Musk did have some sort of guardian or parental like relationship at some stage with his step-daughter later partner. BTW, you can find many tabloid stories about cases of the controversial Genetic sexual attraction theory but these don't tend to involve celebrities (except in the very minor way that their relationship attracts attention). However our article does include a see also for Anaïs Nin who I see documented a brief sexual relationship as an adult with her estranged father. Nil Einne (talk) 11:31, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * So he married the mother of his stepmother (stepgrandmother?) and she married the son of her son-in-law (grandson-in-law?). The son can say he is his own stepgrandfather-in-law as well as his own stepgrandson-in-law. --Lambiam 22:52, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Hmmm. There could be potential for a song in that. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.198.140.169 (talk) 01:38, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Courtesy links: I'm My Own Grandpa, All You Zombies. Mitch Ames (talk) 10:18, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not a celebrity, but two of my mother's brothers themselves married a mother and daughter, and on my dad's side of my family my grandmother married the nephew of her aunt (her mother's sister's husband's brother's son, if you want to get technical.) -- Jayron 32 11:09, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * So you have a family pretzel? Clarityfiend (talk) 12:01, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Genetically, no. There's not any cousin marriage in there, at least not within normal socially acceptable amounts (in the "we're all related somehow" sense).  -- Jayron 32 13:26, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Organ grinder tune in Little Nemo
The attached page has some sheet music played on an organ grinder by anthropomorphic monkeys. Can you recognize the tune and provide a link to somewhere where I can hear it? Thanks. Error (talk) 11:28, 28 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Don't recognize it, but it's fairly weird. It's in E♭ with a definite melody but there are variously three, four or five crotchets (quarter-notes) in each bar without corresponding time signature changes; it appears to be written by someone who is aware of what they're doing, but deliberately badly notated and relatively un-singable. It's quite funny in itself to someone who knows and understands music. For something written in 1909 it's a very avant-garde piece, and it's certainly not a toe-tapper because of the frequent time chages. I would personally say it's a musical joke in itself and relatively unlikely ever to have been published or recorded. Always willing to be proved wrong. MinorProphet (talk) 11:27, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * There's the distinct possibility it was written by someone who wasn't trying to write an actual melody meant to be played (and the person may have not even been able to read such a melody) but was simply creating something that looked vaguely music-y simply for the artwork. It wouldn't be the first time someone working in visual arts didn't pay any concern to the accuracy of what they were creating.  -- Jayron 32 12:11, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I tried to play it, and while the notation may not be perfectly accurate and in parts a bit hard to read I was surprised at how much sense it makes (in particular the bit in panel 7 is not bad at all). It is distinctly in 3/4 time, without intentional time changes in my opinion, and a bit sad, or I simply don't play it spritely enough. Of course I don't recognise it... --Wrongfilter (talk) 12:28, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I've transcribed it to the best of my ability. I think there's something wonky with the time signature, or possibly some missing notes, but I could be wrong. It does seem to me like the sort of melody that an organ grinder might play. Shells-shells (talk) 20:16, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I've transcribed it to the best of my ability. I think there's something wonky with the time signature, or possibly some missing notes, but I could be wrong. It does seem to me like the sort of melody that an organ grinder might play. Shells-shells (talk) 20:16, 29 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Sounds like a legit song. I wonder if it had lyrics and if the spacing of the score was intentional, sort of an inside joke (especially panels 6 & 7). -- 136.54.106.120 (talk) 21:29, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Sounds vaguely familiar, but of course one rarely hears pre-WW1 popular songs these days. I suspect it would sound sprightlier if played somewhat faster. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.194.81.165 (talk) 22:23, 29 August 2023 (UTC)


 * So, it is in fact very singable. Thanks for the Lilypond score, which I hadn't come across until now (Sibelius is more my thing). It's not all in 3/4, although there is an underlying waltz-type motion. Some bars/measures are of unequal length, and trying to force it into 3/4 isn't a faithful transcription. My attempt, rather more slowly:

The first bar/measure in the second stave in panel 5 (bar 11) is a bit odd, perhaps in 1/4: the first object looks like a grace note c' followed by a crotchet/quarter note g. Panel 6 is a repeat of panel 4, but the note values are much better defined.

Some research indicates that it is possible to hide the time sigs with something like

{   \override TimeSignature.stencil = ##f }

but I don't know how that can be achieved, or how to get the playback to reproduce the pause on the c, 5 bars before the end. The pause on the last crotchet rest in the final bar is hilarious. Fascinating stuff. MinorProphet (talk) 23:58, 29 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Our article on the cartoon strip artist, Winsor McCay, is fascinating. According to the Winsor McCay section: Impresario F. F. Proctor approached McCay in April 1906 to perform chalk talks for the vaudeville circuit. For $500 per week he was to draw twenty-five sketches in fifteen minutes before live audiences, as a pit band played a piece called "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend". In mid-1907, Klaw and Erlanger (theatre and movie impresarios) announced they would put on an extravagant Little Nemo show for an unprecedented $100,000, with a score by Victor Herbert. The piano score is on IMSLP, and MIDI files here. See also Little Nemo, much the same material. Having listened to just the first two musical numbers, I would say that Victor Herbert could quite easily have been involved in the music we are discussing here, it's quirky and lots of fun. MinorProphet (talk) 01:00, 30 August 2023 (UTC)


 * And bingo! Thanks to your excellent sleuthing, I've identified it as the Trio "In Happy Slumberland", which starts out in 6/8 then ends in a Tempo di valse, which is our mystery tune. See pages 132-134 of the piano score on IMSLP. It's in pure 3/4, as I suspected. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  01:31, 30 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Wow, quick work, Jack! Fab result. How about this (in the original cartoon time-free notation) with a playback rit. and pause:

The full final answer is (thus proving myself to have been utterly wrong): the tune in the strip cartoon is a musically humorous take on the waltz from "In Happy Slumberland", (starting 'Do you believe in dreams, dear?'), No. 28 in Act III from Victor Herbert's extravaganza Little Nemo, lyrics by Harry B. Smith, based on Winsor McCay's cartoons of the same name. Piano score (1908), pages 132-134. MIDI file is here. The clue, of course, was always in plain view, in the title of the original strip cartoon, "Little Nemo in Slumberland"...

Blue skies, MinorProphet (talk) 02:17, 30 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Some extracts from the musical (though not this particular song, as far as I can tell) were apparently recorded for Edison Records and released as Edison Amberol Record 287, which can be heard here via the Cylinder Audio Archive. Shells-shells (talk) 03:47, 30 August 2023 (UTC)


 * The cartoon apparently celebrates the success of the Little Nemo show described above. The first speech bubble in the cartoon (Panel 1, "We'll each go in a different direction. North east south and west, see?") reflects the words of the opening chorus. Further exploration of the lyrics might shed more light on the words in the cartoon. The whiffenpoof mentioned in panel 15 was developed from an ad-libbed line by Joseph Cawthorn during the show's run, giving rise to the Yale student singing group The Whiffenpoofs and their hit The Whiffenpoof Song. The cartoon was published in 1909, well before the show came to an end in December 1910. (Info from Winsor McCay ). MinorProphet (talk) 05:05, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Great find, Shells-shells. The sound is really not too bad for 1909 (I have a collection of 1,500 78 rpm records, some dating back to 1904.) The Edison Amberol series on which the recording appears (Nos. 1-1149, Popular, US Domestic) were apparently hard wax cylinders lasting around 4 minutes, introduced in the previous year, 1908. More info from the same audio archive here. It would be simple to identify the specific numbers on the recording from the from the MIDI files. I had already been wondering about orchestrating the mystery tune before listening to the recording, and the sound of Victor Herbert's disciplined own band has given me some ideas. There's even more sentimental 'soupy-swoopy' rit. in places than in my last effort... How musical styles change, eh? It's certainly not K-pop. I'll have to dig deeper into the capabities of the Lilypond implementation on WP. MinorProphet (talk) 11:34, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Aargh, apparently. MinorProphet (talk) 12:01, 30 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Original score and lyrics:
 * Herbert, Victor and Smith, Harry Bache, "In Happy Slumberland : Trio" (1908).
 * Vocal Popular Sheet Music Collection. Score 4866.
 * https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/4866
 * -- 136.54.106.120 (talk) 13:46, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * You were right about it having lyrics, thanks for the link. What a mess of a scan! I fear that the said anthropomorphic monkeys had a hand in this one. The 2nd page is the inside cover advertising another work, the 3rd page is p. 4, the 4th page is p. 3 (the start of the work), the 5th page is actually p. 5 (the end of the work), and the rest are the inside and outside rear covers. Is this typical of the general standards at UMaine? MinorProphet (talk) 15:05, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Amazing job! I added a summary of your conclusions to the Commons page. --Error (talk) 17:14, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * P.s.: A single-page sheet music copy (no download): https://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/collection/074/076 -- 136.54.106.120 (talk) 01:02, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
 * There certainly is a download, but my pdf reader complains that it can't cope with it. Since the third page is unavailable as a preview on the site itself, I'm hardly surprised, The pdf is obviously corrupt. I imagine the monkeys have been busy, not being content with the UMaine one. Are all US universities similarly incapable of putting a simple pdf together? (NB Johns Hopkins led the way in reporting the Covid pandemic, all praise...) The IMSLP copy reffed above is entirely serviceable, although the other contemporary sheet music covers and decorative surrounds are lovely. MinorProphet (talk) 16:11, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I should have been more specific: "no download required" --but is available. I didn't try downloading the PDF. --136.54.106.120 (talk) 19:41, 31 August 2023 (UTC)