cool slang names for pieces

[john-strand]

Don’t forget that lovely old hymn “Jesus Spits and Shines” – (AKA Jesus Bids Us Shine)

[unknown-user]

..or bill bixby only…(bisbigliando)

[helen radice]

I don’t know if this is a British thing, or if I’m just mired in the wrong crowd, but almost all the names for pieces I’ve ever heard or come up with have been too obscene to repeat here.

For the Mozart concerto though I’ve also enjoyed the “flat and sharp” or the “deaf and dumb”.

Tee hee!

[carl-swanson]

I always heard Swan Lake referred to as Duck Pond. And Sleeping Beauty as Schlepping Beauty. In non-harp literature there’s the ‘corset hymn,’How Firm A Foundation, or the Beastiality Aria from Messiah, All We Like Sheep. Then there’s the X rated folk song Auora Lee, Auora Lee(Orally, Orally). I’m sure we’ve all heard foreign students refer to the Concerto for Fruit and Harp by Mozart. I need a vacation…

[Elizabeth Volpé Bligh]

And then there’s the ballet Romee-et and Julio.

[carl-swanson]

Remember the joke from Mash? Where someone got a recording of the Mahler song cycle ‘Kindergarten teacher.’ (kindertotenlieder)

[Elizabeth Volpé Bligh]

On that topic, our football team at U of T Music was called The Gustav Mawlers.

[Fearghal McCartan]

Music for really tired people includes ‘I’m-(a) Clean-(a) Knackered Music’ by Mozart.

[carl-swanson]

I’ve heard Madam Butterfly refered to as Madam Butterball by Marilyn Horne no less. I always heard The Bartered Bride called The Battered Broad.

[Elizabeth Volpé Bligh]

Madam Butterball! I love it! Maybe someone could play “The Turkey” during an entr’acte. Perhaps there could be an inserted dance scene from “Duck Pond” to round out the evening. Perhaps the conductor could be Peter Maxwell Gravy…The score could be cut and basted… Cio Cio San would reconsider committing seppuku and instead offer a dish of underdone turkey to Pinkerton, upon which he chokes to death on the wishbone, and she gets to keep her son! What do you think? Does the story have legs…or drumsticks, that is?

[Anonymous]

The orchestra people at New York City Ballet used to refer to Debussy’s Afternoon on a Farm.

[John McK]

In Irish dance music there’s a good reel call “Dick Gossip’s.” When we play it, I usually introduce it as “Bill Clinton’s.”

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

West Side Snorey or Borey

The Cow Opera: Low-and-grin

Twistin’ with Isoldie

The Meisterschwinger

[Audrey Nickel]

Well, on the hymn side, there’s also “Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear” (presumably the sequel to “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”.

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

I grew up next door to the Jacksons, so every Christmas the carol went Gloria…………… Jackson!

[Author]

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