Classical Music Overload

I went on a classical music overload the other day. From the time I woke up, I was looking up songs and listening to music that I don't normally listen to. It's not that I don't like classical music, it's just that I don't really spend a lot of time getting into it. But everything changed on Thursday morning simply because I woke up to Tom and Jerry.

When I woke up, I turned on my television to find a cartoon glazing my screen. It was an old Tom and Jerry cartoon. This is the kind of cartoon that they just don't make anymore. I'd be surprised if kids today knew that these cartoons existed. But we grew up on these, folks. Anyway, the episode I was watching was called "The Cat Concerto". In this episode, Tom is playing a piano piece while Jerry tries to mess it up. What ensues is a duel between the two that ends up completing the song, not destroying it.

But after that episode was over I could only think one thing.

What was that song?

As I said before, my generation and the ones before were raised on these kinds of cartoons, and so, as in the case of this episode and others like it, we were exposed to a great deal of classical music. We are exposed to it so much that we recognize this music while not knowing exactly what the music is. Television commercials do the same thing. They use classical pieces in their ads, but we don't know what they are. We just recognize them and end up humming them to ourselves.

But after watching that episode of Tom and Jerry, I decided to do what any desperate man would do in that situation.

I Googled it.

I found this site, which helped me satisfy my search for the title of that song, Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2 by Franz Liszt. I'm quite sure that anybody in America would recognized this tune almost immediately. It was also featured in the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" among other places. You can download Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2 by right clicking this link and saving it.

And so, with a little more Googling, I was able to find another site which tells you the Top 10 Classical Works You Know, but You Don't Know. It's definitely worth checking out.

If anyone out there has a song stuck in their head from a cartoon or commercial and wants to know what it is, ask me and I might look it up for you.

Or, you know, you could just Google it.