Help me identify this melody?

[le_sacre]

I've got this stuck in my head today and can't figure out where it's from. Can anybody identify?



My hunch was that it was Palestrina or Victoria, and I feel like it's a quite well-known piece, but I've been scrounging through my listening library and can't find it. Maybe it's from a different period entirely, but in my memory it's definitely sung by sopranos in a melismatic style (I think on the syllable "i"--as if that really helps). Unfortunately, I can't remember the counterpoint beneath it, nor any other section of the piece.

Anybody? Thanks!

[Philidor]

Ha! You've an [ame="http://www.brightcecilia.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1915"]earworm[/ame]. I've got it now....

Sorry, don't know it. Welcome btw!

[marquis66]

Hmmm, neither Mutopia nor Musipedia have anything.

[Florestan]

We should have more threads like this.

I don't know, and sadly there isn't a classical music version of Shazam (the mobile phone music identification service) so it's no use playing it into a smartphone.

I was going to say something about that the other day. My friends at work tried it. Shazam identified a Deep Purple track after about 8 bars (no, it wasn't Smoke on the Water!) but could not make anything at all of Air on a G String. Shameful.

I was hoping it would come up with A Whiter Shade of Pale, but I was disappointed.

There is definitely an opening in the market for some code boffins there. Marquis? You would need access to a phenomenally huge music sample library, though.

[Scott Good]

The closest I can come is the Fugue subject from WTC I - D#min. But it only loosely follows this melody.

A very beautiful fugue btw. It wouldn't surprise me if this fugue was inspired by the work for which you are looking, especially if it is Palestrina. Bach used a huge variety of source materials for his WTC collections.

He is the original post-modernist! (Flo cringes)

[marquis66]

Originally Posted by Florestan

There is definitely an opening in the market for some code boffins there. Marquis? You would need access to a phenomenally huge music sample library, though.

See, the best part of doing something like that is that you open it up as a game for the first six months, and make other people "playing" do your dirty work. "Can you fool the computer? Ooops, you did, what was that?"



And Hmm, maybe that would be an interesting thesis capstone project...

[le_sacre]

Turns out there's a whole sub-forum devoted to quests like this: http://www.talkclassical.com/identifying-music/. I got hooked on it last night and spent way too much time tracking down a piano concerto that someone had heard as background music on CSPAN! But the downside is a distressing number of people asking for help with a "classical song" that is neither classical nor a song. Sometimes we take for granted what our ears tell us when we've been training them for so long.

Argh, this is still bugging me. I can hear the fragment so clearly in my head that while searching through my library I can even tell by the timbre of the choir whether it might be a match, but every time I try to "continue" on with it in my memory nothing comes. And still no luck in the searching. I think this fragment must be a mere blip that's not very representative of the whole piece.

I wonder actually whether there's a big database somewhere of midi files of renaissance music?

[DJ Fatuus]

Originally Posted by le_sacre

Turns out there's a whole sub-forum devoted to quests like this: http://www.talkclassical.com/identifying-music/.

He posted it there first

[marquis66]

Originally Posted by le_sacre

I wonder actually whether there's a big database somewhere of midi files of renaissance music?

*Specifically* Renaissance? No. But Mutopia and Musipedia both have fairly extensive "classical" lists.

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by DJ Fatuus

He posted it there first

Oh no he didn't.