But that bloody dawn coming up like thunder is driving me crackers

[sovay]

Oley Speaks' popular setting of "Mandalay" and Kurt Weill's "Und was bekam des Soldaten Weib" are melodically similar enough that I can sing them interleavingly, but not such that I think, even taking into account Brecht's well-tracked admiration for Kipling, it means anything.

This has been your useless realization for the night.

Comments

[sovay]

Do you start with the same song every time, or are they perfectly miscible?

It's a recent discovery: I was walking home tonight from halfway to Woburn, singing "On the Road to Mandalay," when I got to the turn of a verse and it went straight into "Und was bekam des Soldaten Weib" without changing keys or rhythm, so I went back and laid the two songs out as side-by-side as could be done without sheet music in order to determine whether there were any similarities or whether it was just my brain. The answer seems to be a combination of both, but I can't see why the Brecht/Weill would have any reason to be intertextual with the Kipling/Speaks, so I think it's just an oddity. You can hear the likeness whichever one you start with.

I'm wedded to the Bellamy, it seems.

I had already gone through the Bellamy for "Mandalay." I'm not sure how I got there from "Waiting at the Church."

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

The one I find myself falling into is:

How are things in Glocca Morra?
There's a way, said the wise old man...

Nine