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Tune Req: toy pig that survived the titanic

25 Nov 13 - 02:16 PM (#3579063)
Subject: Tune Req: toy pig that survived the titanic
From: GUEST,Jon Brennan

to all my music loving friends - see if you know this tune from a toy pig that survived the titanic..
"This musical pig has gone down as part of Titanic folklore. In stories about the sinking, the tune has always been described as being a Maxixe song, the music played to accompany a South American dance, similar to the tango. However, Mr McEvoy said they had been unable to identify it, so far.
"It did not sound particularly South American. It always struck me that the toy seemed to be French, so a South American song seemed unlikely, although it may be."
The pig belonged to Edith Rosenbaum, then 32, an American fashion journalist and stylist who had been reporting on French fashions at Paris' Easter Sunday races.
She boarded the ship at Cherbourg, as a first class passenger, along with 19 cases and the pig. The animal had been given to her by her mother as a good luck mascot, after Rosenbaum survived a car accident the year before in which her fiancé, a German gun manufacturer, had been killed. The item would have cost around 10 shillings at the time.
After boarding the Titanic, she had written a letter to her secretary in Paris, posted from Queenstown – the ship's final port of call – in which she praised the vessel, but added: "I cannot get over my feeling of depression and premonition of trouble."
(to me it sounds like an old nursery tune but i still can't place it..)
listen at the link below ->
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/titanic-anniversary/10257184/Listen-to-eerie-music-from-Titanic-sinking-101-years-on.html


25 Nov 13 - 04:23 PM (#3579110)
Subject: RE: Tune Req: toy pig that survived the titanic
From: Jack Campin

The solution came out shortly afterwards - "La Sorella" by Charles Borel Clerc. Very popular at the time, recorded by Sousa's band among others.

Arrangement for ukelin here:

http://www.studiobobo.com/ukelin/0802-La-Sorella.jpg

(and that must be the most appropriate instrument for it - like a haunted musical box).