Instrumental Pieces that Everyone Knows but that Hardly Anyone Knows the Name/Composer Of

That this piece of music has a title; that that title is "Entrance of the Gladiators"; and that the composer intended it to be played for soldiers as they marched off to glory in war.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B0CyOAO8y0

― but also fuck you (unperson), Wednesday, September 16, 2020 6:21 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I am reminded of William Gibson's quote "The street finds its own uses for things."

― but also fuck you (unperson), Wednesday, September 16, 2020 6:21 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

serious lols at that

― visiting, Wednesday, September 16, 2020 6:29 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I can't be the only person to read the composer's name as 'Julius Fuck', right?

― emil.y, Wednesday, September 16, 2020 6:45 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Holy shit and Julius Fuck, I never thought of that music as anything other than circus/Looney Tunes music.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, September 17, 2020 6:49 AM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, this is the craziest shit ever

― kinder, Thursday, September 17, 2020 6:57 AM (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've been meaning to start a thread forever to showcase the instrumental pieces that everyone knows but that hardly anyone knows the name/composer of. Like 'Sabre Dance':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqg3l3r_DRI

― Don't be such an idot. (Old Lunch), Thursday, September 17, 2020 7:05 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

great thread idea! i was at a relative's organ recital(!) and the best bit was watching the audience reaction when they recognised what was written down in the program as "J.S.Bach, Toccata and Fugue in D minor". top marks went to the kid in front who said excitedly "it's the Dracula song!!!"

― ( X '____' )/ (zappi), Thursday, September 17, 2020 7:13 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho9rZjlsyYY

anyone know much about the Orientalist vamp that kicks off King Fu Fighting?

Low hanging fruit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaC0vNLdLvY

or the Arabish vamp where people sing "In the South Of France / Where the naked ladies dance"?

great thread idea and count me also gobsmacked by the origin of the circus clown song

And I mean, yes, of course, this is ILM so a lot of you nerds absolutely know the names of these things but I'm thinking about the layman here, Joe Lunchpail, hearing one of these pieces popping up in the middle of a Looney Tune but never being able to put a name to it.

Like I'm sure y'all were already hip but it wasn't until a decade or so ago that I finally learned the name of this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CI-0E_jses

I want to know the origin of the 9 or so note "Oriental" connotation melody, like at the beginning of Rush's "A Passage to Bangkok."

There are a few great instrumental rock examples of this, too. Like this sultry film noir-y one one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfAv8yAaHps

Dog Latin, you are speaking of "The Streets of Cairo." Its authorship is murky because it's probably a folk melody that various composers have leapt on and arranged.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabian_riff?wprov=sfla1

For Josh, a similar story attends the "oriental riff" as used in "Kung Fu Fighting."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_riff?wprov=sfla1

for me, though, the great grandaddy of all these has to be the French folk song "Ah! vous dirai-je, maman," which shows up as the alphabet song, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, etc.

Mozart wrote variations on it but did not compose it.

Now I'm realizing I've forgotten the name of that other big band tune everyone knows, the one that starts out

BUM baaadaBUM baaadaBUM baaadaBUM baaadaBUM baaadaBADABAWAAOW BADABAWAAOW

(^professional music notation, iirc)

You sure that's not Sousa?

What's the one that's played on a xylophone or something like that and sounds like either hold music or elevator muzak from the 70s?

It goes:

Dum da dum da dum da dum

Da da dum

Da da dum da dum

Then it goes a bit higher, and then back to the start

I'm sure the answer to some of these questions is "Lawrence Welk" or "Henry Mancini" or the like.

Ahhhhhhh, okay, the big band tune I was thinking of is Benny Goodman - 'Sing Sing Sing'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_E0UVNtJ9Y

Also, see this: https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2018/03/heres-a-playlist-of-songs-you-know-but-you-cant-name/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW0W7j04iRQ

Funiculi Funicula (Luigi Denza)

Things like this fascinate me. Like for example, who composed "Chopsticks", etc.

I hope that song made that man very rich.

Also, generally any classical music widely used in cartoons will fit in this category. "Love Theme From Romeo and Juliet" by Tchaikovsky is a good example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHvnMi9_9mM

Ahhh the Funiculi Funicula, I never knew what it was but I feel like it's in my head, lurking, somewhere for a significant proportion of time.
As is another that goes
da- duh-duh DUH x2
da- duh-duh DUH x2 (lower DUH)
da- duh-duh DUH x2 (higher DUHs)
da- duh-duh DUHHH (highest DUH)

was going to suggest 'theme from a summer place' but it's on Old Lunch's lifehacker article.

Bent Fabric - 'The Alley Cat'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eTHNaBbRYw

David Rose - 'The Stripper'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2CWfSLyjx8

The Chantays - 'Pipeline'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7c2ZKamzS4

The Mar-Keys - 'Last Night'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX5T9GvSnbY

The T-Bones - 'No Matter What Shape'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SH2V8BLfUs

The Viscounts (after Duke Ellington) - 'Harlem Nocturne'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfAv8yAaHps

I vaguely remember a Saturday Night Live fake ad for a compilation album called Classical Music You Know From Cartoons, or something similar.

Anyone who hasn't heard Herb Alpert's Whipped Cream and Other Delights or Booker T.'s Green Onions will be surprised to learn that they already know about half of each album.

for me, though, the great grandaddy of all these has to be the French folk song "Ah! vous dirai-je, maman," which shows up as the alphabet song, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, etc.

Mozart wrote variations on it but did not compose it.

What's funny is the French version I first knew of this was a back-translation of the English "Brille brille petite étoile". I only knew about the original bc of the Mozart and only found out what the words are just now. (They are better.)

That was the first version of it in French that I knew of, not the first version of the song I knew, which was probably "Twinkle", ofc.

I didn't know about Fucik either, embarrassingly.

It's okay, everyone has their first Fucik encounter when the time is right.

(Yes, everyone of a certain age probably already knows this but still) Marvin Hamlisch - 'The Entertainer'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T4Uk7mDR-w

um "The Entertainer" is very very very famously Scott Joplin

most of these way too well known

this is a classic tho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2LJ1i7222c

never understood "The Stripper". It is so unsexy

I was going to suggest 'The Stripper' for this, pretty sure everyone knows it's called 'The Stripper' but I certainly had no idea who it was by.

I always thought 'The Entertainer' was a Joplin tune, though. *googles quickly* It is a Joplin tune! Hamlisch's version is probably what gets played most, though? (oh, and it's an xpost, yes, NV OTM)

If you boarded a plane or stood in an elevator between 1966 and 1983, you'll have heard this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO6q9eOQq5g&ab_channel=boytronic66

This is a repository, a place to learn, I am but a lowly Joe Lunchpail who only knows about songs with words

https://youtu.be/x3Bz6AQNIO4

http://youtu.be/x3Bz6AQNIO4

'The Stripper' is the funniest thing to me because, yes, it's so thoroughly unsexy. It's like someone mashing a nudie mag in your face.

god dammit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3Bz6AQNIO4

I love "The Stripper", it's def not lapdancer sexy and all the better for it

"gran vals" by francesco tarrega has a little part that is instantly familiar that everyone has heard a million times, but i doubt even 2% of people have heard the entire piece

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSQzUx3QW2Y

Richard Wagner - “Bridal Chorus” from the opera Lohengrin (i.e. here comes the bride)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C5FOW2ekHo

xpost Kinda like 'Tubular Bells', which takes on a whole 'nother flavor once you hear more than the minute and a half featured in The Exorcist.

'Yakety Sax' is another one where probably most people know the name of the song but not the composer. I feel like it's too well-known to really count here, though. Also kept too close to its original intentions, maybe?

I didn't know "here comes the bride" was Wagner!

Isn't that well-known to be Wagner? 3xp ha maybe not

also v. popular at weddings, Toccata from Charles Marie Widor’s 5th Organ Symphony

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSfJTiWTf4k

Glad I was able to summon one up!

Now the true boffins itt can get to work and figure out the origin of this one, which the internet in general doesn't seem to have worked out as of yet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW7Op86ox9g

Ah god damn, I just spent ages trying to track down "the Egyptian sounding piece of music" and now I see it was addressed upthread. There's some interesting info in the description to this youtube of 'Streets of Cairo', though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A5yJ5Z2Ezw&ab_channel=SamuelStokes

xp that is the original music that played when the asp turned up to give Eve the fruit of knowledge

scratch that, it was composed by the first fish that crawled out the sea

CPE Bach's "Solfeggietto" is the same, I feel like I heard this piece a million times before it popped up in my piano book

I've only ever heard this used in Treasure Mountain. Same w/ Beethoven's Contredanses.

On that note:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5poSw7tFLB4

also this song that gets played (or used to get played) in sports stadiums:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5LW07FTJbI

which was taken from this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsorGbKwNlA

holy shit. I had no idea.

one thing i do know is that kernkraft 400 mixes absolutely incredibly with “shoot your shot” by divine

Enjoyable thread!

How about ubiquitous in trendy bars old instrumental funk tunes such as Cissy Strut or Green Onions? Bet the majority of the trendy bar visiting population could hum but not name them.

in response to greg fanoe's mention upthread, a mini-essay on chopsticks and its composer:

First of all (at least in the UK) there are TWO different pieces known as CHOPSTICKS — one of unknown authorship, the other the only published work (1877) by the 16-yr-old Euphemia Allen, pseudonym Arthur de Lulli (or below = de Lulu courtesy a scanning typo). Euphemia Allen’s brother Mozart Allen was a music publisher, which presumably helped establish the piece: as did its opening being very easy to play even if you can’t play anything else. The section after the opening — where it becomes more obviously waltz-like — is far less well known than the opening, except in one curious context (see below).

Chopsticks youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3m7BZ5tzeg

Chopsticks sheet music:
https://i.imgur.com/gZktCaK.jpg

The ”Chopsticks“ of unknown authorship is also (more properly?) known as Flohwalzer or FLEA WALTZ (and sometimes as CUTLETS), and is largely played on the black notes (see youtube below and sheet music below that). Also it’s not actually a waltz, bcz not in three time.

Flohwalzer youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6RJ5yalISo

Flohwalzer sheet music:
https://i.imgur.com/RyeG3n9.jpg

There is in addition a CUTLETS POLKA aka TATI TATI that was turned into variations by Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov and others, with sections said to resemble Euphemia A’s Chopsticks: Paraphrases: 24 Variations et 15 petits pièces sur le thème favori et obligé:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x--S0JXg_k

Curious context: the theme music for Viv Stanshall’s SIR HENRY AT RAWLINSON END is a piece called Aunt Florrie’s Waltz — aka Flowalzer? — and credited to Stanshall. But its second measure is p clearly identical to the secondary theme in Euphemia A’s Chopsticks (which strikes me as a very Viv Stanshall type of joke):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RciT8ec1S1Y

'Flohwalzer' is what I always knew as 'Chopsticks' growing up. The existence of two 'Chopsticks' songs was very confusing for some time.

The dude in the OG Chopsticks video is playing with literal chopsticks in his right hand = massive kudos from me bro, fuck yeah my man.

oh shit!!!! he starts snapping his fingers and sticks during the 2nd verse too, SICK!

i mean if ever a pianowork needed props to rescue it

no disrespect to 16-yr-old euphemia

This keeps showing up on my spotify discover weekly so I'm pretty familiar with it by now, but it seems like for years I heard this all over the place (or a sampled version of it) without knowing what it was:

Moondog - Lament I, "Bird's Lament"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSimbyS_YlA

hey thanks OL for posting “happy-go-lively”, been wondering about it for years.. and thanks Lavator for bringing it up! :)

xp we had a short digression about this in the under 2 minutes songs poll–the song we've been hearing all our lives was "get a move on" by mr. scruff, which samples "bird's lament"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HamLxGxeDqI

https://youtu.be/zvesdlGe-EI

A question appropriate to this thread came up in the Macabre 'Gloom' thread. The melody from the chorus of Holidays of Horror...

https://youtu.be/mP2YV8OfAWs

It is the melody for the Chili's "happy happy birthday from all of us to you" song. Is it also the melody for '99 bottles of beer on the wall'?

Cliff Nobles - 'The Horse'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btHrhq4caiA

Been trying to track down this for a few days.

Keith Masfield - Funky Fanfare

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P51cMstawuc

doubling back a bit but WOAH, "Music Box Dancer" is one of the major ice-cream truck themes here in NYC! i figured it was just an attempt by some in-house Softee composer to create something ice-creamy, while respecting the limitations of whatever inexplicably old-fashioned, duophonic mechanical synth tech they're using in those things.

best NYC ice-cream truck theme is Lambada mostly because I thought it was a Sun City Girls Song at first.

This one has lyrics, but I'm sure there are a lot of people who simply know Heart and Soul as "That song you learn when you're learning piano".

https://youtu.be/advQkt_8Pzs

And here's Tea For Two Cha Cha which I hear pop up in places from time to time, and only knew it at The Offspring's Intermission music
https://youtu.be/UaMZPjyG3ys

In the UK, there are a load of old radio theme tunes that are always used to evoke the 40s or 50s

Puffin' Billy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtGUaScpSbg

In Party Moood:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqsp413SXuQ

Devil's Gallop:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2eqX93umXo

The Dick Barton one was used in Monty Python a bit I think.

CBS bumper etc. reminds me that I never knew the ABC movie of the week theme was a Burt Bacharach composition named after his daughter called “Nikki” until we did this thread: Wishin' and Votin' - the BURT BACHARACH SONGBOOK Poll Results
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM-Vkd7On2Q

🚨 🚨 SPOILER ALERT 🚨 🚨
That video features the added bonus of a brief appearance by William Windom

But the ABC 4:30 Movie theme I don't know who wrote it or what its title is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2es-lfRSDOI

Oh wait, I have met the ad agency guy who was in charge of it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfksiAUfQ6M

Luciano Michelini - frolic (from the post-golden television era; has become a meme tune)

Does anyone else find it mildly amusing that the artist behind “Music Box Dancer” is named Frank Mills?

Following on from "Heart and Soul" I think "Happy Trails" (as an instrumental) often signifies cowboyness even without vocals.

Indeed it does.

CBS bumper etc. reminds me that I never knew the ABC movie of the week theme was a Burt Bacharach composition named after his daughter called “Nikki” until we did this thread: Wishin' and Votin' - the BURT BACHARACH SONGBOOK Poll Results🕸
📹

Posting the once ubiquitous commercial for 120 Music Masterpieces, starring the actor, not the composer or guitarist, named John Williams.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP9u_7eSlTQ

Ooh, here's one I don't know if we've covered: the kind of Russian Cossack death-march dirge that you hear pop up all time. I mostly recently was reminded of it at around the 3-minute mark of (forgive me) this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQQlCaEo1l0

Where does this come from?

"Song of the Volga Boatmen"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tw3g88JtWA

Wow, thanks!

lol beat me to it

Holy shit, is that where the band got its name!?!?

I was watching "Dawn of the Dead" tonight, and when the bikers first break into the mall there's this music in the background that sounded very familiar. And then it hit me: unless I'm totally wrong, it's the same music from the opening credits of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"! I did some minimal digging and found this quote:

Terry Jones: We realized we needed mock-heroic music but at that stage we couldn’t afford to record more music (for the titles) so the only thing I could do was go to a music library, DeWolfe in London, and I spent weeks sorting out bits of music.

With some more minimal digging I found the title on some comp called "De Wolfe Music Presents: Music from Monty Python on the Holy Grail."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJa4xs71nco

No doubt George Romero grabbed the same cheap stuff from that same music library.

Indeed! Included in an upcoming Dawn of the Dead box:

The Complete De Wolfe library Cues Part 1

The Complete De Wolfe Library Cues Part 2

this song, which i've always known as "that public domain incidental music that they use in always sunny in philadelphia" is trending on tiktok right now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QQ_QHlTalk

Found out today that this, which is basically how I count to 12 mentally, is by the Pointer Sisters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUL4T8WcFdA

Edvard Grieg, "Morning Mood" from Peer Gynt Suite

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMs0rNtBZJk

This is called "The Washington Post March"?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peidgSY8A50

democracy dies in starched pants