a little day music

[calimac]

The Terrible Adult Chamber Orchestra held another public rehearsal, in the same grass amphitheater in the Mountain View civic park that they played in on the Fourth of July. As before, B. was in the principal violin seat, and I came along as driver and listener. This time it was Halloween, so the repertoire was a bit different from July.

The Balletto from Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances, the least obviously seasonal of the repertoire; Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King," a great workout for the winds; Gounod's "Funeral March of a Marionette," which got its place in this concert due to having been Alfred Hitchcock's tv theme tune; Saint-Saens' "Danse Macabre," with several of the violins playing the solo part at once, which wasn't nearly as awful as it sounds; and a couple of pops pieces to close off: a 1940s song called "Autumn Leaves," known, though not previously by me, for having lyrics by Johnny Mercer; and a medley of spooky theme songs.

This last supposedly included the theme song from Scooby-Doo, which I don't recall any theme song from and didn't recognize any here; and the theme song from Ghostbusters, which doesn't have a theme song: all it has is a guy shouting "Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!" which the orchestra vocalized here, thus proving my point.

The "Funeral March" turned out to be the most challenging piece, due to its frequent shifts of tempo and key, and detailed repeating sections. One remembers that its composer was most at home in opera, and he brought some of that composing style to his other works. Then when the conductor tried to insert a main theme reprise into "Autumn Leaves," I understood what she meant the first time but most of the players had considerable trouble. However, most of the playing was quite adequate for an amateur group and a genuine pleasure to hear.

The small audience - this didn't get as publicized as much as July did - included a lot of small children in costume carrying goodie buckets. It was nice to know they're still making Halloween-celebrating kids, since trick-or-treaters stopped coming by in our neighborhood several years ago, so we've ceased putting anything out or buying candy that'd only get leftover.

The boys wore a variety of costumes, though dinosaur-shaped full-body onesies were popular among the toddler set; the girls were mostly princesses, though I did spot one 3-or-4-year-old Spiderwoman.

Comments

[conuly]

This last supposedly included the theme song from Scooby-Doo, which I don't recall any theme song from and didn't recognize any here;

Scooby dooby doo, where are you, we've got some work to do now.
Scooby dooby do, where are you, we need some help from you now.

Come on Scooby Doo, I see you
Pretending you got a sliver
But you're not fooling me 'cause I can see
The way you shake and shiver

You know we got a mystery to solve
So Scooby Doo be ready for your act, don't hold back
And Scooby Doo if you come through
You're gonna have yourself a Scooby Snack, that's a fact

Scooby Dooby Doo, here are you
You're ready and you're willin'
If we can count on you Scooby Doo
I know we'll catch that villain

I may have watched Scooby Doo every day before school in elementary.

Of course, there's more than one series and, perforce, more than one theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChNmaeY_Sos

and the theme song from Ghostbusters, which doesn't have a theme song:

Yes it does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9We2XsVZfc

[calimac]

Yep: like I said, Ghostbusters has no theme song. Just some riffs and some shouting.

[conuly]

So quite aside from the lyrics in between what you call "some shouting" I think most people refer to that all as the theme song.

[calimac]

You think I hadn't heard it before? It's not a song. There's no song in it.

[conuly]

That does not appear to be a widespread opinion.

[calimac]

Doesn't matter.

Q. How many legs does a dog have, if you call a tail a leg?

A. Four. A tail isn't a leg regardless of what you call it.

[conuly]

I would say that if you call a tail a leg then a dog has five legs, because in your idiolect the word "leg" means "limb".

[calimac]

No. Leg means leg. Song means song. A dog doesn't have five legs; the proposition is absurd. And this thing isn't a song.

[conuly]

Many generations ago the word we now say as "silly" meant "blessed". But words do change, of course, and they do so person by person.

And this thing isn't a song.

That's certainly your opinion, and you are welcome to it. Whoever wrote up the program feels differently, as do many other people.

Why do you care so much about this?

[calimac]

Why do -I- care about this? Why do -you-? I just made a casual remark in my post about Ghostbusters not having a theme song, and you keep pursuing me over this despite the fact that I have nothing further to say about the subject; I'm just clarifying what I already said.

The changing meaning of words has nothing to do with this. You can call it a 'song' if you want (see 'leg' of dog), but all you're doing is diminishing the meaning of the word. It's not a song by the meaning that the word 'song' has always had, and that's what I meant by saying so. This is not about what it's -called- but about what it -is-.

(Also, what's with your bizarre statement about idiolects? 'leg' doesn't mean 'limb': an arm is also a limb, but a dog has no arms. 'Limb' has no more or less an absolute definition than 'leg' does. I could pull the same joke with the other word: Q, How many limbs does a dog have, if you call a tail a limb? Same answer.)

[conuly]

If you google "ghostbusters theme song" you get a youtube video. You may have a personal definition of song that doesn't include that one, but that's your idiolect - you can't expect anybody else to agree with you, and it's clear that many people don't. Yet you're trying to assert that your private definition is the main one.

There are people who say that free verse isn't poetry, but that doesn't stop it from being published in books of poetry, because their definition is not universal.

Language is not some platonic ideal. It exists only in the minds of the speakers. No one speaker has the "one true definition". Not of song, nor of leg, nor of tail. Nor do words diminish in meaning. that's nonsensical.

And your comment about dogs and legs and tails? I've heard multiple people give multiple answers to that. Your punchline is not universal either. It's a bit more chicken and eggy than you think - depending on your reasoning, you can come up with lots of answers.

[calimac]

I'm sorry if I misled you earlier, but this is not a semantic question about the meaning of the word 'song'. As I said before, this isn't about what the thing is -called- but about what it -is-.

This is not a personal or private definition of the word 'song'. It's what the word has always meant. It distinguishes between actual songs and tuneless, shouted monsters like the Ghostbusters theme. (And a lot of other pieces of popular music. I think the theme from 'Shaft' was the pioneer of its kind: a lot of riffs and vamping, no actual song.)

Now, if we change the definition of the word 'song' so that it includes things like Ghostbusters and Shaft, we are eliminating a useful distinction. We are diminishing the meaning of the word. There's nothing nonsensical about that; diminishments of that kind occur all the time, but the diminishers have no more rights to the language than the rest of us, so we have the right to protest. And indeed sometimes the diminishments fall out of use.

When I said that Ghostbusters has no theme song, it should be obvious to any normal reader - but apparently not to you - that, since it has something that is -called- a theme song,* I am using a stricter definition of the word 'song', and am doing so for rhetorical purposes. This is a very common rhetorical strategy not limited to me. I could have phrased it differently, but again I didn't think a normal person would have trouble understanding the concept.

*which I obviously already knew, I didn't need you to tell me that, the condescension is really reeking here

[(Anonymous)]

We "only" got 400 trick-or-treaters this year. Up from last year, but still down from pre-COVID days. Due to the location of our neighborhood vis-a-vis Certain Parts of Oakland, a lot of parents from those Parts bring their children here to trick-or-treat, deeming their own neighborhoods unsafe for the purpose. While it results in large expenditures for the anual candy (this year we gave out 90 packets of Cracker Jacks and 300+ pieces of candy), we feel that it would be churlish to refuse when the parents are being careful about their kids' safety.

Re: Ghostbusters -- you are in effect denying that the entire genre of rap has "songs" in it. While you are (obviously) entitled to your opinion, you are rapidly curmudging yourself into the position of a person who insists that infinitives are not to ever be split, or that slang can ever become real language. I don't like rap much more than you do -- there are a few, beside "One Night in Bangkok", that I find enjoyable -- I refuse to let my personal distaste for a genre that obviously (a) takes talent, if not the kind we grew up with, and (b) provides a great deal of pleasure to a large number of audients refuse a simple extension of a word whose boundaries have always been a little vague.

[calimac]

Trick-or-treat: Shows how very different neighborhoods can be, so thanks for the caution. Ours is predominantly Asian, especially South Asian, and I would guess that, most likely because they already have Diwali, that that community has been slow to take to Halloween. But I don't really know.

Ghostbusters: This is not a matter of liking/disliking, but of classification. No, rap is not "songs" by any previous definition of song. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just a different thing. It's a new art form, and should be judged for what it is. It shouldn't be melded indiscriminately into the existing category of "song," which risks letting it be taken as doing the existing type of song, but doing it badly. That's not fair to rap, which is trying to do something else. My point was that rap is not well-suited to being inserted into a medley of tunes, because tunes - as such - are not what rap is about, while it is what songs are about. (And it's not just rap, n.b. my citation of "Shaft", which is not rap.) New art forms should be differentiated and celebrated for their own qualities if they're to be appreciated.