Just heard the latest advert for the Proms, and absolutely LOVE ( ) the piano song playing...it's really really familiar, and I probably should know what it is, but I can't think!!

Can anyone enlighten me?!

Thanks!!

Was that the one on BBC2 just after Francesco? The one where there are notes flying around and the voice says "Catch every note of the Proms"? It's part of the Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini

Oh of course!! Yes that's the one!! Thanks for that - it was really bugging me!! Beautiful song, must learn it!

Happy to help

P.S.1 - most people round here consider a song to be something with words. As the Rachmaninov doesn't have words, try "piece" or "work" instead of "song"

P.S.2 - have a quick game of spot the difference and try to work out why I was watching Francesco...







<faints at all the silver haired gentlemen on this thread>

Er....it's obviously something to do with the gondola in the background.....

Mmmmmm... Dmitri

In case singerpianist or anyone else is interested, the Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini will performed as part of tonight's Prom. Live on Radio 3 and BBC4, and available on Listen Again until next Friday

No Dmitri or Francesco though

Hmmm , it seems I should be hoping my hair will turn silver sooner rather than later !

It's not technically a song unless a voice is singing - instrumental musical works are called pieces........

Sorry Deborah - you beat me to it!!! Glad I'm not the only one who gets a little annoyed by incorrect terminology..........

Bravo Deborah and Chocolatedog...I too get very irritated when people call a piece of music a Song...SONGS HAVE LYRICS...The American boards are full of this error and don't even look at you-tube the comments are extrordinary, It is staggering just how many people refer to pieces or works as SONGS...

Hmmm. I can be as pedantic as the next forumite, but . . .
. . . words can and do change their meanings with time. For a musical example, the word "Sonata" used to mean nothing more than a piece to be played, as opposed to a "cantata", a piece to be sung. If enough people over a wide enough area for a long enough period refer to pieces of music as songs (with or without words) then that will become one meaning of what a song is. It may already have happened.

In any case, for an example that owes nothing to American misuse/neologism, how about Mendelssohn's Songs without Words? No lyrics in sight, but still songs.

My ipod is full of piano music from 1500 to the present day, but it calls every track a "song"

MT

p.s. What is with Robodoc's sudden interest in feet?

No, it's a piece.

I find the use of the word « song » for pieces of music which are not songs very irritating. I don’t really agree with Robodoc on this one because I think it is another example of sloppiness and imprecision.

My experience in teaching English as a foreign language has led me to see that many errors in the use of English occur because non-native speakers have been badly taught. Their mistakes often enter the language. Native speakers are equally guilty - but have fewer excuses! We all make mistakes but for the sake of clarity we should try not to. Of course language changes and develops all the time but there is a difference between the development of new vocabulary and expressions needed for modern life and communication and the slovenly use of any old word to mean any old thing.

I won’t rant any more as it would be off topic but a song is a song is a song!!! It isn’t a symphony or a concerto or a sonata. and we have some perfectly good “cover all” words – “piece” or “composition”
for example

I think half the problem is that people speak in a slovenly fashion or don't understand how to write down what they've heard which gives rise to such excrutiating errors as:

I should never of done it
My brother has just taken grade free trumpet (actually I haven't seen that written down, but it's bound to happen sooner or later)
I'm eating a pack lunch
It's a tempory situation
Please don't leave buggy's here! (thank goodness - I've been waiting ages for him to arrive!)

And so on...

Bring back dictation!!

well that one surely is correct, as its a lunch that came in a pack, and is also a noun.

It's (note apostophe) a packed lunch, 'packed' being a past participle used as an adjective to describe the noun 'lunch'.

You missed out the "r" in apostRophe. Tut tut.

Touché!

Oh yes, sorry about that! I'm normally really picky about those sort of things, too! Maybe it was because I was in a hurry when I wrote the post (I just HAD to find out the name ASAP!!).

But I'll bear that in mind in the future, thank you for correcting me

I saw these two on another forum (both American)

Neck stoor (as in 'my friend lives neck stoor'); and
in mid evil times - which I've seen more than once and rather like, as they were pretty awful times for a lot of people who lived in them, but I don't know if early evil and late evil times were any better.

My younger son regularly uses 'of' instead of 'have', as in your first example, and I spend so long shouting 'have' at him, that we usually forget what it is he should've done in the first place.