Sometimes musicians in other genres take classical music and do something new
and different with it.  I know quite a few examples come to *my* mind, & I'd
be interested in any anyone else comes up with.  (Of course, *talking* about
them isn't the same as *hearing* them ...)

30 responses total.

To start with something *really* different:
Peter Schickele's very first Schickele Mix program, a few years ago now,
included that late-60s top-40 version of "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead".
He pointed out the break in the middle, which turns out to be a rock
rendition of some dance music by Michael Praetorius, which would
make it a few hundred years earlier than the movie of _The_Wizard_of_Oz_,
of course.

I know this felt really weird to me.  I remembered the song (that version)
quite clearly.  (Bleah.)  In the years since then, I'd become quite familiar
with (and fond of) the Praetorius piece through hearing it on classical-
music stations.  (Didn't have a firm grasp on what it was, I admit.)
But until he played the two back to back I didn't notice the connection.
(In fact, he played the song first & I still didn't notice!)
(Schickele has of course sprinkled his shows with other examples of
this kind.)

Sometimes, though, I make the connection right away, of course.  Both ways.
For example, my first exposure to Tschaikovsky's _Romeo_&_Juliet_ was
a rock version by Deep Purple, from an album in the late 60s.
This also included a version of part of a Beethoven symphony, also
previously unfamiliar to me.  (I was rather classical-deprived growing
up.)  In both cases I experienced great joy in encountering the pieces
in their original form - instant recognition, and a sense of "wow, so
*that's* what that is".

OTOH, I'd worked on learning a certain Bach lute bouree on classic guitar
before I heard Jethro Tull's syncopated variations - which probably is
the only thing I've mentioned which many of you may be familiar with.
Again, it was pretty recognizable, and the recognition added to the
pleasure.

I do really love Schickele Mix, when I can find the time to listen.
I never fail to learn something from that show.

Yep. Me too. Still Saturday afternoons, WUOM, 1:00 p.m.?

Another of the kind of thing I'm thinking of: a few years back there was a
duo called the Cambridge Buskers.  (I'm not sure if that's MA or England.)
I've only heard selections on the radio - their recordings were unavailable
last I checked <SIGH> - but they seem to have been one person playing
accordion and one playing recorder (possibly other fipple-flute-class
instruments).  I've heard, for instance, their version of the 1812 overture,
selections from Wagner's Ring cycle, & a bunch of other stuff, & it's
*wonderful*.  (Grace heard their version of the Pachelbel canon in D, which
she said terminated abruptly with the sound of a gunshot.)  I'd have to say
that they're a crossover with tongue rather firmly in cheek.

A crossover question--In Procol Harum's 'whiter shade of pale', is the
harpsichord (or whatever electronic imitation in is) part an exerpt from an
actual Baroque piece?  is sounds sooo familiar...

I presume you mean the organ part.  If so, nope.  But I know what you mean.

I don't know that this belongs here, but here it is anyway.  I have in front
of me a CD we got last month, _April_Fool's_Waltz_ by Passages (Jem Moore
mostly on hammer dulcimer & Ariane Lydon mostly on 12-string guitar).  It has
lots of good stuff, mostly not classical at all.  But it has an arrangement
of Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D Minor (yes, *that* one) for dulcimer with
occasional bits of guitar where there are thicker chords.  To my ear, this
is just a transcription with (maybe) some appropriate adaptations to the
particular instruments involved, not an arrangement in a different style. 
(It's awesomely impressive to hear, BTW.)  But it's not only plopped into a
(broadly) folk album, it segues at the end into Brigs O'Perth (and in the
notes the combination is given the subtitle "Bach to Old Ireland").

The CD also contains something called "Scarlatti's Adagio in D".  Here's what
the notes say on it:
        Hammer dulcimer has long suffered under the stereotype of being an
        instrument on which to play loud and fast traditional tunes.  In order
        to dispel some of that myth, we adapted this composition from a piano
        exercise, slowing the tempo and using the resonance of the dulcimer
        and guitar to build chords underneath the melody.
I'm not otherwise familiar with this piece - I like Scarlatti just fine but
haven't really gotten familiar with *anything* of his - and if I understand
it this wasn't originally adagio, so I have no idea what it really is.  But
again there's little or nothing in this particular performance that would have
offended (or, I think, surprised) any educated listener during the Baroque
era.

On another note that may not belong in this item: last night on WGTE (Toledo,
OH public radio), I heard a performance of Vivaldi's _The_Seasons_ by someone
called (if I've got it right) Instruments of the World.  This wasn't
outrageous or anything, but *different*.  I don't know quite how to describe
it, so I don't think I will; if someone else knows it & feels up to it, be
my guest.

Global warming?

I meant some kind of musical description by someone who'd *heard* it, Rane.
<sigh>

And there were authentic-sounding bird sounds between the movements, 
too -- since I'm not sure which music is which season, I wasn't sure
whether the geese were supposed to be going north or south, for example,
but it sounded like real geese.  

And there are [supposed to be] authentic bird songs/sounds in the next-to-last
movement of Respigi's "Pines of Rome".

Those Respighi bird sounds are scored specifically to be played from 
a particular sound-effects record, on a phonograph, if I am not 
mistaken. 

I've heard that, too.

Speaking of the toccatta & fugue in d minor, there was a version of that ohn
handbells on Prarie Home Companion a while back.

Re: #13: At the time Respighi wrote "Pines" (when was that, BTW?), did
phonographs exist?

The _Harvard Brief Dictionary of Music_ gives the date 1924 for "Pines".
They had some kind of phonographs then.

Edison's original phonograph was in the 1870s. By 1924, they were
pretty good, even if not "Hi-Fi" yet. The had already graduated from 
cylinders to 78 RPM disks by then, I believe.

Did they have electronic ones yet?  In literature from (or set in) the 20s
there are all kinds of references to winding up the Victrolas - I've met them
on into the late 30s, too.  But, yes, while the quality must have been awful
by today's standards it was good by theirs, & there were plenty of records
around.

When I was a small child -- mid 1940's -- our parlor record
player was a wind-up Victrola. I think we graduated to an
electric one shortly after World War II.

My dad was an early adopter of electronic things, and he bought 
(and built) an electronic vacuum tube-based hifi in the late 40s.
There probably weren't any such devices in 1924, but as davel said, 
there were plenty of records around, and even a sound-track record that 
caught Respighi's ear. He specified the exact recording to be used.
The device he heard it on was probably a Victrola, but I'm guessing.

*WAAAY* back to Dave L. in response #4 --  I remembered that someone 
was looking for the Cambridge Buskers, but I couldn't remember 
who, or where I read about it.  ANYway, Encore Music on Liberty 
has a selection of the Buskers' LPs.  Ask at the counter; they are 
filed away in the back room with the slow-selling humor items.
 
I'm sure that I saw a Cambridge Buskers compilation CD some years 
ago, but I can find no trace of it in current catalogs or 
discographies.

Yep, that's what I was told when I was looking.  (That is, that there was a
CD but that it was out of print & no longer listed.)

Thanks for the pointer, Ken.  I *looked* at Encore but didn't ask, or didn't
ask the right person maybe.

(Well, I breezed into Encore while rushing from one place to another, got
someone to show me where the comedy section is, bought 2.  Haven't had a
chance to listen yet (& won't very soon).  (Hadn't seriously shopped in
Encore since it stopped being Liberty Music - quite a jarring experience,
on the whole.)  Thanks for the tip, Ken!)

Finding Music R Us!  :)  Seriously, I love to dig for things, so 
keep those inquiries coming!!

I remember when I was a kid, I had an eight-track of The Ventures playing
classical music on guitars and drums and things. The two tunes I remember most
were Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring and Peter and the Wolf.
By the way, why is it every time I call this system, I either get, "Connection
timed out" or I browse around for a while, and then information stops coming,
because the system is down.

(John, I assume you are telnetting to us, or using Backtalk over the 
Web; in either case,  Grex has a slow and creaky network connection,
but it is due for an upgrade very soon.)

Back to the "Pines" thing.  If I recall correctly (it has been about two 
years since I played that peice, so I could be wrong... I often am....) 
It is scored so that there are simply instructions that it is to sound 
like a bird.  When we did it, we got one of those silly whistles that 
kids get that you put water in the bottom of and they make the tweeting 
noise.  It worked out okay... when I saw the Nashville Symphony do 
"Pines" last year, they had one of the flutes make bird like noises.  

In the first performance, they did, in fact, use a phonograph.  It was 
an early record player, and it was very scratchy, to the point where 
more scratching and less birds were heard.  This is one of the reasons 
that most modern performances replace the recorded version with some 
sort of performer.

Live performances, OK.  Recordings will use a tape of bird sounds.

Re way back to #0:
There are many instances when I've heard a bit a classical music borrowed or
reused, but for some reason I can only think of very few right now...
Foremost in my mind is from Sondheim's "Into the Woods".  The chorus of the
first song in the musical ("Into the woods, it's time to go...") sounds
remarkably like the marchlike Allegro section of Ravel's Concerto for Left
Hand for a few bars.
In the background music of a Japanese cartoon I saw once, the opening to
Shostakovitch's fifth symphony is played note for note, as far as I can tell,
only an octave higher.
These seem to be the only two I can think of right now, but more might come
to me later.

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