The real classical music versus television themes

 

 

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO—I know you are supposed to be intently listening during a performance of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, but a Summer Pops presentation on Thursday evening, Aug. 28, got me to thinking about how, for better or for worse, the minds of children can be imprinted forever.

When the orchestra conducted by Ken-David Masur played Gioachino Rossini’s William Tell Overture, I immediately remembered the Lone Ranger television series I had watched as a child on television and half expected someone in the audience to shout out “Hi Ho Silver!”

Of course, the audience at this appreciation performance for symphony donors was far too sophisticated for that – and I’m glad to say so were my fellow guests of these patrons. Nancy and I were privileged to have been invited to the concert by San Diego Jewish World’s music reviewer Eileen Wingard.

Childhood memories were evoked later in the concert when the orchestra played The Beautiful Blue Danube by Johann Strauss Jr. It’s not my fault that I shall forever associate this melody with a commercial for a canned dog food that played over and over on television during my childhood. The lyrics went:  “Get Rival Dog Food. Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof!”   The memory comes unbidden into my head.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that many fine pieces of classical music were popularized for 20^th century audiences (that’s the century in which I was a child). As examples, Dance of the Hours by Amilcare Ponchielli became the summer camp song, “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah,” by Allan Sherman. Tchaikovsky’s “Piano Concerto in B Flat” was turned by singer Jackie Wilson into “Alone At Last.”

Even though we may learn intellectually that the tune we enjoyed as children was appropriated from elsewhere, it’s difficult psychologically to switch gears. You hear the insistent call of the brass in the William Tell Overture and if you grew up watching the The Lone Ranger, you immediately think of that masked western hero and his faithful friend Tonto.   You may now know that Strauss composed the wonderful melody about the “Blue Danube,” but the “Woof! Woof!” of the Rival Dog Food commercial comes automatically to the memory.

As music and associative memories can lodge within our brain, so too can symbols. Hamas at one point used a Mickey Mouse-like character on its television station to spread invective against Israel and the Jews. Anti-Semites use cartoons and other illustrations in an effort to equate in young minds the symbolism of the swastika and the Star of David.

The Lone Ranger series went off the air in 1957, when I was 12. But now, 57 years later, the musical theme of the TV show – which in reality was The William Tell Overture – remains in my memory.

I fear that symbols and music intended to inculcate hate will long remain in the memory of a new generation of anti-Semites. The German Nazi party is dead, but its psychological spawn remains.

The Summer Pops concerts are staged in South Embarcadero Park alongside the San Diego Convention Center and adjacent to San Diego Bay.

During the playing of The William Tell Overture two large Navy helicopters flew over the bay, skirting alongside the grounds of the Summer Pops. “No, no, that’s the wrong music,” I automatically thought at the time. “It should be “Ride of the Valkyries.” After all, that Wagner tune was the music played by the attack helicopters in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 movie Apocalypse Now.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com