Clerihew Corner

[Peter Clark]

Mex Reger

Sometimes wrote a bit like like Bach, only vaguer,

And by the time he'd finished

There was little anyone else could do with the chord of the diminished.

 

William Mathias,

It seems, was sent to try us

But it looks like we'll have to wait

To ask him why he was apparently so obsessed with added 6ths and 9ths and time signatures like 7/8.

 

 

Any more, anyone?

 

Peter

[gazman]

Any more, anyone?

Please, no!

[davidh]

Franz Tunder

Was quite a wonder

Who taught Buxtehude.

His own music was cruder.

 

Johann Pachelbel

Is giving us hell.

His awful canon

Goes on and on and on and on and on and on.

[Paul Morley]

Olivier Messiaen

Was a most thoughtful and mystical man;

His pieces take many hours to learn

But their structure is not always easy to discern.

[bombarde32]

........There was an old lady from Ealing,

 

Oh, err! perhaps not!

[DouglasCorr]

Tournemire,

Improvisateur sans peer.

And behold, quelle technique,

Fifty two weeks of L'Orgue Mystique!

 

 

 

(someone may regret they ever started this...)

[Paul Morley]

The works of Johann Sebastian

Are of Protestantism a bastion;

He wrote dozens of cantatas -

And that's just for starters.

[Paul Morley]

Frederick Delius

Wrote music that was a bit touchy feelious;

He was hampered in his quest to become a great impressionist

By the dreadful consequences of having been a youthful indiscretionist.

[Guest Patrick Coleman]

PLEASE Mr Mander delete this thread!

[Paul Morley]

Johann Pachelbel

Is giving us hell.

His awful canon

Goes on and on and on and on and on and on.

You have seen this, I take it...

 

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM

[notebasher]

An organist name of Carter

Tried hard to write a cantata.

He decided to have a good look

In his dog-eared old manuscript book

But all its pages all were blank

And remained so, to be quite frank.

 

He went to a country station

To get some inspiration,

He listened to birds, dogs and trains

And kept the sounds in his brains.

But when he went home to write

The result was nothing but rubbish.

 

R.

[Paul Morley]

A former titulaire of Notre Dame Cathedral

Was justly famous for compositions and improvisations cerebral;

Many of us, no doubt, would wish to have heard him play

- though perhaps not on the fateful occasion when he passed away.

 

 

Igor Stravinsky

Was not given to whimsy;

He did no think that the organ sounded very nice,

And wrote a very famous piece about human sacrifice.

 

 

…pay me lots of money and I will stop

[Guest Patrick Coleman]

AAAARGH!!!!!

[Paul Morley]

Dear old Cesar

Was too unworldly by far;

Naughty old Franz

Seldom stayed in his pantz.

Yet, though each was in temperament the other's antithesis,

Both were much taken with thematic metamorphosis.

[notebasher]

Three cheers for Buxtehude

He was felt to be somewhat shrewder

Than JS Bach

Who wrote fugues just for a lark

Trouble was the lark could whistle very well but couldn't play the organ.

 

R

[Malcolm Kemp]

Limericks, like flowers and organ voluntaries are banned in Advent. (I am sure Fortescue and O'connell would gave included limericks in their edict if they had had access to this Board!)

 

Malcolm

[Clavecin]

Maurice Ravel

As musicians can tell

Wrote harmony to discern

Most difficult to learn

[notebasher]

In the bleak mid-winter now frosty winds make moan

The carols all get practised, melody over drone

It wasn't writ like that at all, basses can't read the notes

So a sort of bagpipes' reedy sound now issues from their throats.

 

Let's try out another one, a tune in key of G

Sopranos won't enjoy it 'cause it goes above a C

And then below another one, the C an octave lower

And rather than andante, they'll sing it even slower.

 

Tenors now are different, they like a cheesy song

And rather than to learn it, make it up as they go along.

Contraltos hoot like tawny owls, with bulging eyes a-gleaming

But can't take on sopranos when their top C-sharps start screaming.

 

What's this story all about, does it ring a bell?

Or have you never had to train the choir conceived in Hell?

Surely if you ever have, you'll know they'll not be missed -

Best put on your wellies and gloves - become an organist.

[Vox Humana]

Who cares

If Nares

Is less manly

Than Stanley?

He can't hold a candle

To George Frederic Handel.

[davidh]

"Some say, compared to Bononcini,

That Mynheer Handel's but a ninny;

Others aver that he to Handel

Is scarcely fit to hold a candle:

Strange all this difference should be

'Twixt tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee!"

 

John Byrom (1692-1763) who in 1727 wrote, An Epigram on the Feuds between Handel and Bononcini:

[gazman]

To quote the litany: "Good Lord, deliver us"!

 

No more, please....

[Vox Humana]

If Howells

Disturbs your bowels,

You may be as happy as Larry

With Parry.

[Malcolm Kemp]

At Morning Prayer - Quicunque Vult - according to Uncommon Worship

 

Whosoever will be saved; before all things it is necessary that he refrain from posting limericks about composers on the Mander Invision Power Board as these are verily indeed neither convincing nor comprehensible. They that have obeyed this injunction shall go into life everlasting; and they that have not will go into everlasting fire.

 

There; I knew I'd find a use one day for that small book gathering dust on the shelf!

 

Malcolm

[nfortin]

Benjamin Britten

was known to be smitten

with a tenor from Lancing

and boys that did dancing

 

Giuseppe Pitoni

loved canelloni

and wrote very well you know

Cantate Domino

 

Herbert Sumsion

a man of great gumption

had a fine Willis organ

which, sadly, is long gone

[john carter]

There is a young man, name of Mander

Who builds organs that couldn’t be grander

I’d say that St. Paul’s

Outdoes Albert Hall’s