Re: Doorbell dilemma

[TomP317 <TomP317...>]

There's a possible other link between London street sounds and Jewish music, 
that's been intriguing me. Meanwhile:

I don't imagine that Big Ben was the first clock to sound like that (although 
actually Big Ben is the name of the bell itself, named, according to the 
encyclopedia next to me, after Sir Benjamin Hall, who had it installed when 
he was commissioner of works at Westminster Palace).

The only reason I can think of for it sounding like that is that you had to 
have four notes. Carillon, claims the OED, is derived from the Low Latin word 
quadrilion, a group of four bells. And these four notes are arranged in the 
Westminster clock to provide a text-book four-phrase motif, with a statement 
going to the dominant, popping back up again, descending again in a slightly 
different order (perhaps to mimic the 'changes' of bell-ringers eager to 
demonstrate how many combinations of bells they can manage) and then 
returning to the tonic in an identical manner to that first return. 

I've heard them in Vierne; they come up in a few other pieces by British 
composers too, but I've forgotten what they are. 

Link - I'm curious about Lionel Bart's use of London street music. The song 
in 'Oliver' -'Who will buy this wonderful feeling?' springs from a genuine 
flowerselling catch, heard as late as the 1940s. Given that Bart was here 
being openly, indeed stylishly lightfingered himself, is it too much to 
suggest that Fagin's song 'I'm reviewing the situation' is jolly similar to 
'Bai Mir Bistu Shen'? And if that's fair, has Lionel Bart used other 
traceably Jewish melodies?

Tom Payne

---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+