It's more complicated than that. Mozart was following a "Turkish"/"Janissary" style of music popular in Europe at the time. Indeed the style was pretty much unrelated to actual music from Turkey, but there's a history of how it developed that started with Turkish Janissary bands. (More obviously in orchestral "Turkish" music than in Mozart's piano sonata, where compositions used exotic instruments like bass drums.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_music_%28style%29
For a piece of music with a similar association, see The Streets of Cairo, or the Poor Little Country Maid¹ which for many have come to symbolize ancient Egypt¹.
"Hail to the Chief" comes to mind as used for setting scenes in America in many movies. Usually scenes having to do with the character playing the president, but in a lot movies that is the main time they need to say 'hey this america people'
On an international site (it's currently 18:30 on Friday evening where I am, for example), populated by people who might not necessarily do 9-5 Mon-Fri, I don't think there's any such thing as non-work-hours
If you mean 'please don't link to TV Tropes', say so.
But then I listened through the William Tell Overture enough to get to "Ranz des Vaches", and -- you're right, that's the big one. I just hadn't realized that "Ranz des Vaches" and "Morning Mood" were different tunes until now!
Fortune rota volvitur;
descendo minoratus;
alter in altum tollitur;
nimis exaltatus
rex sedet in vertice
caveat ruinam!
nam sub axe legimus
Hecubam reginam.
mfw "the pentatonic scale." Pentatonic is a form of scales. There are innumerable pentatonic scales, although practically, it's bounded by about 50!/45!. [0] And in everyday 12-tone chromatic use, there are at least 5 different versions [1]. Even in Asian scales, there are numerous pentatonic scales in use.
Blues music, for example, uses pentatonic scales, yet blues music does not sound like Thai music.
Now that technical matter has been cleared, I find it hilarious and symptomatic that researchers didn't look into any CHINESE MUSIC to see if there were any sounds that might have influenced Western composers. For example, just listening to music played on a Gu Chin [ 2 ] reveals a number of similar intervals (such as single step motion and parallel fourths) and stark tonality that could easily be recognized in attempts by Western composers to imitate and integrate Chinese music.
That article was less of a "how it happened" and more a "that it happened." The seething, suspicious racial tension underneath was distracting and needless. Everyone should ignore it (and probably the rest of NPR) and simply enjoy Chinese music for what it is: interesting and beautiful. sigh.
you know more and have suggested more jumping-off points for further research than anyone else in this thread - so of course your comment is near the bottom. this site sometimes, sigh.
The comment is smug, unhelpful, and very misleading about the pentatonic scale.
Okay, you could call any five notes a pentatonic scale, but don't let that distract you from the pentatonic scale, the set of five notes that appears in many cultures for solid music theoretical reasons.
The linked video about blues is using the same scale, just with the notes in a different order. Different modes are not different scales. D F G A C is the same scale as C D F G A. We should be interested in the fact that blues and Thai music use the same intervals, not dismissive.
The comment also continues to ramble through several kinda-music-theory-esque statements whose aim is not to inform, but just to make the author appear smart.
> the fact that blues and Thai music use the same intervals
Blues and Thai music do not use the same intervals. Blues is hemitonic, Thai music is anhemitonic.
".And the Thai musical scale is indeed different -- for the intervals between all notes are exactly the same. This means that almost all the notes are slightly different in pitch from those on the western scale. Only the interval between a note and its octave, eight notes higher up the scale, is the same as in the west." [0]
The problem with this site is that people don't accept information unless it's accompanied with a major dose of ass-kissing. "So, pretty please with sugar on top, clean the fucking car."
> > kinda-music-theory-esque statements
> solid music theoretical reasons
Ok, you've done what you've accused me of doing. Care to back your statement up?
I'm not usually interested in reading idle musings about what the commenter was doing today, and I tend to downvote those.
I feel like HN users increasingly treat the comments as a place to just spit out whatever is on their mind. That's great in a regular conversation, but I don't want the comments section to turn into a place for conversations. I'd rather see fewer, more informative comments.
its not off topic nor offensive. people trying to force other people what to say and how to express themselves to suit what they want is exactly the problem we have today.
however, it would make sense to give people an option to choose what type of comment they are leaving (muse, additional context, rant, etc) and allow users to filter which ones they see.
It seems to me that how it's played is almost as important as the melody itself. Playing it just now on a clean guitar and a piano, it's not all that evocative of China. Yes, maybe a little bit, but it does sound 'wrong'. Curious.
OK, so it's not a Chinese tune. What would be a suitable replacement? Ideally something authentically Chinese, broadly recognizable, and somehow representative of Chinese music.
