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Comment by StavrosK | Hacker News Reader

Pretty long and off-topic shot, but would you (or anyone else) happen to know this piece? We've been looking for a name for years:

https://soundcloud.com/stavrosk/unknown-piece-from-brewsters...

On-topic, how can I listen to a performance? I clicked through to a few lists but haven't found any buttons to do that on the site.

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Have you tried writing down the Parsons Code [1] for the melody and searching against a large corpus? E.g., https://www.musipedia.org/melodic_contour.html

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsons_code

That's interesting, I'll do that now, thanks!

EDIT: Not much luck :/

If you can produce a MIDI encoding of this piece, I can run it through a classifier trained on a large dataset of classical composers, and identify most similar pieces.

Alternatively, you can ask someone who trains deep learning models on audio files, and has a large classical dataset.

Hmm, I have the sheet music that someone transcribed, and an MP3 of the midi, but not the midi itself, and I don't know how to produce one :/ I will try to ask them for the midi and get back to you, thank you.

The person who transcribed it was kind enough to send it to me, I'd be grateful if you could search for it: http://mormolyke.com/stuff/brewsters.mid

Ok, I will email you when I run it.

It sounds like a Dvorak or Martinu trio or quartet. I'll look into it today. Brings up a pet peve for musicians-- why aren't musicians often credited in other media that uses their work? Sheesh!

Indeed, that's my peeve as well. This work wasn't credited anywhere in the credits, we even contacted movie staff and they didn't know. We contacted the cellist in the scene, and he said it was some random score he had with him, but he didn't have his old notes with him and couldn't find the piece in storage.

wait... you contacted the cellist???? wow, ok. I'm impressed with your research! Who was the cellist? That might help me. If it was something he had with him, it was more likely for a gig or a student. I did a quick check of all Dvorak Quartets- but didn't hit upon the passage. I chose Dvorak because of the pre-copland what would become the American vibe. Don't you think? The reason I don't think it's by Ry Cooder is because not in his composing purview- also not by a film composer there probably because would not want to be caught bringing in something from another gig, no? I'm sticking w Dvorak for the moment- I must have just missed the passage- major key at least...

It was Marston Smith: http://lordofthecello.com/

It's definitely not by Ry Cooder, we contacted him and he said he hadn't composed it. It sounds a lot like Glazunov, too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_05mIC3BIBc#t=2m10s

Glazunov is an excellent guess! I remember playing a student quartet by him when I was a student, and it totally had that modal parallel melodic/harmonic movement in 4ths and 5ths. It is so Dvorak though, minus his noodly viola jamz under the melody. Hint of Ravel, but not French enough- maybe Chopin too. Will be thinking on it this week. I'd like to hear the whole piece too now!Update: I just watched the first few seconds of your clip- and that is the exact piece I played as a student that reminded me of it as I mentioned above. Listening now.

Ok! I put the clip out to my many professional musician friends, and we discussed it. Everyone agrees that it's probably a clip from a Dvorak imitating composer or a wedding gig book. None of us has played it. Everyone was stumped. We all thought it sounded like a cross between the Glazunov you mentioned and Dvorak. Since your cellist plays a ton of weddings and parties (from his website) I'm going to guess it is from a gig book. If it were an actual Dvorak or Glazunov, he'd remember it, or at least one of my string playing friend would recognize it. Shoot- I really thought we were going to solve this for you. Oh well- I guess you should dig into some Dvorak. I can recommend Goldmark- he wrote some beautiful quartets and work in film scoring in Hollywood for a long time. I think you'd love his string pieces. Cheerio!

Thank you, I'll look into Goldmark! I didn't even know there existed "gig books", I thought they were just playing pieces by well-known composers. Thanks again!

I'm now thinking early Shostakovitch-ish. Very "inside" for him though. Why do you want to know? You could probably transcribe the passage... but if you like it, you know who else you'd like too now. ?

A few people and I are just looking for the piece because we like the excerpt and want to listen to the full piece.

Entirely possible that this isn't a piece at all. Sounds like it might be just a random toss-off $5 job by a hired hand.

Try r/classicalmusic and mention the reward. Lots of students and professionals there.

Already did, no dice :/

Hmm. Maybe try to contact someone at KUSC, the Los Angeles classical station. Particularly someone like Jim Svejda, who knows classical and film soundtracks inside and out. Maybe donate the reward to the station if they can id it. :-)

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