A couple of recent opportunities to feel (perhaps unreasonably) pleased with myself for spotting some musical homages and quotations, but in case they might amuse…
Overheard fragments of an epsisode of My Little Pony, caught familiar melodic fragments, and came into the room to pay more attention… A unicorn (“Rarity”, apparently) making dresses to “Thread by thread, stitching it together… Dressmaking’s easy” was indeed reminiscent of - if more optimistic than - Sondheim’s “Bit by bit, putting it together… Art isn’t easy” as modern sculptor George sings of the intricacies of both his latest work, Chromolume No. 7, and of securing patronage to fund the next piece…
And the My Little Pony wiki (for of course there is a My Little Pony wiki) confirms it: “Art of the Dress” is a homage to “Putting it Together” from Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park with George”.
And that also tells me there’s another Sondheim homage (to the song “Ever After” from “Into the Woods”) still to come, so we’ll see if I’m in earshot when that episode rolls around!
Anyway, here are the two pieces on YouTube so you can see what you think…
And while listening to the King’s Singers “Great American Songbook” on the commute one morning, the backing voices to “Heaven… I’m in Heaven…” seemed to fittingly - and remarkably closely - echo “In Paradisum” from Fauré’s Requiem (it can’t be coincidence?) before they get down to dancing Cheek to Cheek.
(Fauré’s ethereal arpeggios were a familiar sign we were in the home straight as his Requiem was a regular feature - along with Vivaldi’s Gloria and Handel’s Messiah - of the university choral scene which occupied much of my student days.)
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