Jon Gallant proposes:

> Let's not be automatically dismissive about the occasional use of
> extra-musical sounds.  Mahler used hammer and cowbells in symphonies,
> RVW deliberately retained the wind machine when he reworked film music
> for his "Antarctic" symphony, etc.  etc..  [Here's a question for a
> parlor game: list serious musical compositions which make use of unserious
> instruments or sounds.]

Richard Strauss used the Alphorn in the Alpensinfonie.  Ravel has that
wonderful opening in a clock shop -- a lot of ticking and tocking --
in Les heures espagnoles.  Gershwin calls for Parisian taxi horns in
An American in Paris.  Malcolm Arnold has the floor polisher and vacuum
cleaners in "A Grand, Grand Overture." Josef Strauss uses bird whistles
in "Austrian Village Swallows." Respighi specifies a recording of a
nightingale in Pines of Rome.  Menotti has that cheap ballad played
on a scratchy Victrola in The Consul.

And then there are rifle shots in lots of scores, as well as odd
instruments and sound effects in the works of PDQ Bach.

Steve Schwartz

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