h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Apparently bad luck happens to anyone who even thinks of sending me a chain letter. They never send me another

. . . . .. ...

Didn't they die out with the advent of e-mail? Now all you get is spam.

There is also chain email. And the Normans also wore chain mail.

Gilbert certainly wrote the lyrics before Sullivan wrote the music; a lot of his songs had been published already as poems and they were shoe-horned into the operas--for instance the only reason that Mabel's father in The Pirates of Penzance was a Major-General was so that he could put in his lyric "I am the very model of a modern Major-General" which has nothing to do with the plot. Furthermore, there was an occasion when Sullivan couldn't work out the rhythm, so he asked Gilbert to hum the kind of thing he had in mind. A few syllables were enough, and Sullivan swiftly completed the tune. Gilbert was highly amused, as he thought himself completely unmusical.

Bacharach and David worked the other way round: Burt sent Hal a tune and Hal had to fit words to it. This explains the loopy lines when written out in text. A complete giveaway is (to my mind) "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head". I am willing to wager that the first line David wrote down was "Nothing seems to fit".

Another example of tune-first songwriting is Can She Excuse My Wrongs by John Dowland. The rhythm is a perfect Elizabethan dance, but the metre changes from bar to bar--a feature of the galliard, but not of any known poetic form.

Can she excuse my wrongs with virtue's cloak?
Shall I call her good when she proves unkind?
Are those clear fires which vanish into smoke?
Must I praise the leaves where no fruit I find?

The accents fall as follows (an a'postrophe pre'cedes each 'accent):

'Can she ex'cuse my 'wrongs with 'virtue's 'cloak?
'Shall I 'call her 'good 'when she 'proves un'kind?
'Are those clear 'fires which 'vanish 'into 'smoke?
'Must I 'praise the 'leaves 'where no 'fruit I 'find?

Paul Simon seems to have gone out of his way to avoid all possible meaning in his later songs. And Harry Nilsson was not averse to rubbish texts, as in Skidoo ... now that's topic collation.

'Can she excuse' was my exam piece! Even though they were kind enough to give me something in my native tongue, it really was hard to fit the words to the rhythm. Apart from the fact that the basic sentiment of it infuriated me no end.

It was The Earl of Essex Galliard, and the sentiments are those the unfortunate Earl must have felt when his bid for the affections of the Virgin Queen were rejected.

The rhythm is unfathomable until you know the tradition of the galliard, which goes to an underlying 3/2 beat but splits it up in bigger and smaller hemiolas. The first strain of Can She Excuse goes 3/2, 3/1, 3/2, 3/4,3/4, 3/1, 3/2 which adds up to eight bars of 3/2. Hence the uncategorisable metre.

I prefer my galliards and lute songs served in chilling ale. Maybe I should stand on both legs for a change. I don't think it's the codpiece.

Do you want chips with that piece of cod

Here's to the town of old Boston
home of the baked beans and cod
where the Lowells speak only to Cabots
And the Cabots speak only to God!

OK - got that about the 3/2, 3/1 etc. Now I need to be able to visualise how it would be danced. And I would have spurned an Earl who wrote such twaddle, especially if I was a Queen.

~ . . . . . . too early in the day yet for . . . . .. ...

Spurning earls comes naturally to us Irish. We have no respect for authority or class.

A study showed that the Irish make the best co-pilots because they will always question the pilot's decisions.

Recumbentman, I salute you. You're the only other person I've encountered who admired John Dowland's songs as much as I do.

Richard Rodgers was something of a chameleon. When his partner was Lorenz Hart, Rodgers would write the tune and have Hart fit lyrics to it. When Oscar Hammerstein II was his partner, Hammerstein would write the lyrics and have Rodgers write the tune. I'm oversimplifying, though. *Both* Rodgers and Hammerstein would discuss the arc of each song, as well as its place in the stage action. With "No Strings," Rodgers wrote both music and lyrics, and in musical after that he reverted to working with lyricists.

Songwriters who write both lyrics and music might be quizzed about what they come up with first. I'm not sure if anyone will part the curtain on Lennon & McCartney's methods....

Well we know that 'Yesterday' began as

Scrambled eggs
Oh my darling how I love your legs

Wot no drift?

On the theme of snack foods in lyrics, you can bring out the spirit of many song titles if you replace "Rock and Roll" with "Sausage Roll"

David Bowie - You're a Sausage Roll Suicide

Rolling Stones - It's Only Sausage Roll But I Like It

I wanna sausage roll all night,
And pasta every day.

Give me the beat, boys, and free my soul,
I want to get lost in the sausage roll,
And drift away....

There's always something magic
There's always something new
And when you really, really need it the most
That's when sausage roll dreams come through.

<BB<

Our choir is singing (instead of 'Hosanna'):

'Lasagna, lasagna, blessed is he who can cook...'