Mysterious Tune found on a Placemat...

[alphanikonrex]

I've been much intrigued by a melody that I discovered on an educational Read-a-Mat placemat about musical instruments. A line of notation in treble cleff runs along the top, and in bass cleff along the bottom. I have fitted the lines together and find that they do form a piece of music, however I have never heard anything quite like it. No information is provided regarding the music.

If anyone has any idea where this may have come from I would greatly appreciate your input.

the placemat:


the score:


audio recording

[Choralia]

I tried searching with Kooplet:

http://www.kooplet.com/

Kooplet lets anyone perform precise searches among about 400,000 music documents available on the Internet.

So, a musician, by using Kooplet, can find a music score from a short melody he entered, or from a few lyrics words. Kooplet will return relevant results that can be previewed and played before selecting the most appropriate document.

No results found, though, using the first notes of the melody.

IMSLP scores are also indexed by Kooplet, however the search is limited to "vector" pdf files, i.e., recent digital typsets. "Raster" pdf files are too difficult for unattended optical music recognition, unfortunately.

Max

P.S.: the rhytmic-only search on the first 5 bars of the melody provides 6 results. There might be something similar to this melody among them.

[alphanikonrex]

Thanks Choralia.

Kooplet appears to be a useful tool to keep in mind—thanks for sharing. I had tried other musical search engines as well, but to no avail.

I looked at the rhythmic results, however I didn't find anything that seemed to reflect the style of my tune—I was listening for the 8th note interplay between the two clefs.

Thanks again.

[sbeckmesser]

The last five bars contain harmonies that firmly anchor the piece in the 20th century and with a composer familiar with jazz chord progressions. I think it was purpose-written for the placemat. If it was "lifted" from a major composer (like Brubeck), royalties and a copyright statement would be in order. Or maybe he just got free food.

--Sixtus

[Meaghan]

Okay, this won't be helpful because I have no idea what it is either, but--I have the same placemat! And have also always wondered what the music is. Can we contact Read-a-Mat? I might try...

[alphanikonrex]

Hey Meaghan—that's pretty neat! Glad to hear about someone else out there that was wondering the same thing. If you do contact Read-a-Mat, please do post their reply!

Impressive analysis Sixtus—thanks for your thoughts. I suppose it's a possibility that the piece was written specifically for the placemat, but if I were the designer I would have just put a nice Mozart excerpt which is public domain anyway; hence lovely music, no problems.

[sbeckmesser]

I were the designer I would have just put a nice Mozart excerpt which is public domain anyway; hence lovely music, no problems.

From a graphics standpoint, any piece by a "real" composer would have to be fairly contrapuntal ,or even a full-on fugue, in order to get more-or-less equal and similar visual activity in the two staffs. The usual melody/accompaniment texture of most music after 1800 would have the bass clef looking quite different from the treble, which would detract from the edge-decoration function of the "piece" as it is used now.

This also brings up the possibility that this is "found" music. A graphic designer might have stumbled across it on the Internet. Among the things it could be include an example from a music typsetting or composition program or a student's 3-voice counterpoint exercise (complete with "mistakes" that result in jazz-like harmonic movement near the end, not unlike the stuff I produced in counterpoint class.) I too am interested in the answer.

--Sixtus

[alphanikonrex]

Interesting thoughts regarding where the designer may have such a piece. Unfortunately I emailed them some time ago asking about the place, but never heard back. That's a shame...