Against all odds – right as the onset of the Cold War, a Soviet composer’s piece became a #1 hit with American Art Music audiences. Aram Khachaturian (who would today be considered Georgian, not Soviet) wrote a ballet called Gayane, whose plot was common for pretty much any Soviet art of the time: Gayane, a good, patriotic, and hard-working Soviet, finds out her lazy drunk of a husband has turned against the state! She tries to correct his behavior, but like anyone who hates the state, he is pure evil. Naturally, her attempt to correct his anti-Soviet thinking forces him to stab her. The husband is jailed, Gayane survives, and ends up falling in love with a good Soviet boy. The two marry and become model, productive citizens, the highest good one can achieve.

Awwwww … so sweet …

At some point in this amazing love story, people come out and dance with sabres. This dance became wildly popular, and ended up being used in many popular songs as well as figure skating routines.

It was 1750. For nearly a century, Baroque piety and gravity weighed heavily on European aristocrats. “Hey, enough of this square, complex music that makes me think about death and stuff. Don’t you know anything, you know, hummable? Something light and upbeat? We just want to party.” Poor aristocrats. What was there to do? The colonies were colonial, the soldiers were soldiering, the peasants were peasanting. They desperately needed a new entertainment – something their parents and grandparents would despise.

Thankfully, the tides were about to change, and the classical era was about to explode. Complex musical patterns gave way to simple, transparent forms. Rich harmony gave way to (essentially) three or four chord functions. Serious, “what is the meaning of life” oratorio gave way to light “let’s see how many people I can sleep with in three hours” opera. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times (quite literally, too.) And, generally speaking, it didn’t end well for those poor aristocrats.

Perhaps it was more “worst of times” than “best of times”. Even so, plenty of real treasures of astounding beauty remain from the classical era, including this well-loved dance from the opera Orfeo ed Euridice by Christoph von Gluck.

Don’t ask me, I didn’t come up with that.

Maybe from boredom, maybe from drinking, or maybe from a sudden burst of creative energy at 4am – whatever the cause, sometimes people write wacky lyrics to instrumental pieces. Sometimes they’re very clever – for example, I’ve heard these words sung to the opening bassoon solo in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring:

“I am not an English horn, I am not an English horn, this goes too high for me, I am not an English horn.”

Another one which is hilarious (albeit on an esoteric level) is this text for the secondary theme in the slow movement of Franck’s Symphony:

“Cesar Franck composed the best he could; his music sounds like Brahms, but not as good.”

But then there’s this one, which is used primarily as a mnemonic device for music students to remember the melody of the minuet from Mozart‘s Symphony in g minor:

“Insane men, ripping out their hair.” Wat?

I can almost rationalize these lyrics: the melody of this movement is somewhat in 2/4 time, while the dance itself is in 3/4 time. It’s like trying to dance a polka when you’re supposed to be dancing a waltz. If you feel the melody in 2/4, then you’ll find yourself adding a beat here or there to compensate, and it can make you insane, possibly causing you to rip out your hair. Whatever, I didn’t come up with it.