"The Mr. Potatohead Syndrome"

It never fails to interest me how one article can suddenly bring
up a multitude of related issues.  Jon Miller started by asking a
question about similar arrangements on different roll labels.  This
led to Joyce Brite's article on the same music appearing in different
songs, in yesterdays MMD.  That led to this article.

In reading Joyce's article, I was reminded of several things.
I am sure we all have noticed melodic phrases in different songs
that are reminiscent of one another.  My own name for this is "The
Mr.  Potatohead Syndrome", named in honor after the child's toy that
we are all familiar with: Given several sets of plastic eyes, ears,
lips and noses, a vast number of faces can be created, but there will
be a "family resemblance" between some of them.

In music, two examples that come to mind are "Who's Your Little
Who-zis" which is liberally borrowed from "S'Wonderful".  I do not
believe that Gershwin ever sued over this, and one possible reason
might be that scholars have found a Jewish folk melody which is even
closer to "S'Wonderful" than "Who's Your Little Who-zis" !

The second example is that I have always felt that the chorus of
De Sylva, Brown and Henderson's "The Varsity Drag" is basically Richard
Rogers' "The Girl Friend" with a few cosmetic alterations, which
actually improve the song a little bit.  Genius that Richard Rogers
was, he certainly didn't need help from anybody, but this is an
exception.  I have no doubt that this practice is still being done
today, but since I can't stand any music written after the mid 1930's,
I don't know any examples.

While I am on this subject, I want to mention an interesting fact about
Mozart.  The following is a quote from a classic Mozart biography by
Alfred (not Albert) Einstein concerning Mozart's love of mathematical
puzzles:

  "The pleasure in playing with figures remained with Mozart all his
  life long.  Thus he once took up the problem, very popular at the
  time, of composing minuets "mechanically," by putting two-measure
  melodic fragments together in any order."

As they say, the more things change, the more they remain the same.
At this point, it seems proper to mention that Handel, Haydn, Mozart
and Beethoven all composed music for automatic musical instruments,
and that brings up the final point I want to mention.

I have read in several books on computers that the Jacquard loom,
invented in the 1700's to automate the weaving of complex patterns
in cloth, is considered the earliest example of programming.  I think
the honors should go to the field of automatic music.  If you look in
Arthur Loesser's monumental book "Men, Women and Pianos" you will find
records of such instruments going back to practically the Middle Ages!

The title of the chapter concerning this subject is a quote in 'Ye
Olde English' (complete with the antique spellings) of the inventory
of items catalogued after the death of King Henry VIII in 1547:
  "An Instrument That Goethe With A Whele Withoute Playinge Uppon
   Of Woode Varnisshed Yellowe".

As a "Pianolist", my favorite quote concerns a "self-acting pianoforte"
from the early 1800's:

"Speed could be regulated at pleasure, while piano, forte, sforzato
  and diminuendo were 'produced by the slightest motion of the hand
  applied to a sliding ball at the side of the instrument' "

Sounds like the great granddaddy of Aeolian's Temponamic Knob!
Anyone care to comment on this?

Randolph Herr