I go swimming most weeks at a local pool, doing 20 laps up and down in my lunch break. Sometimes I get so relaxed doing this that I lose count of how many laps I’ve done. Recently it occurred to me that I could keep track by associating each lap with a musical composition.
I started thinking of works with numbers in their titles. I mean cardinal rather than ordinal numbers. Individual songs or arias don’t count. So I allow:
- Four Last Songs
- Six Orchestral Pieces
- The Twelve
- Music for 18 Musicians
but don’t allow:
- Ninth Symphony
- Octet
The low numbers are easy – being into Second Viennese School helps quite a lot here – but I’m missing the following: 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20. So any suggestions of works which feel these gaps would be gratefully received.
Purcell wrote “Ten sonatas of four parts”. There’s a folk song, arranged by RVW and Grainger and probably many others, called “(I’m) seventeen come Sunday”. One of PDQ Bach’s “Twelve quite heavenly songs” is subtitled “Can you lend me twenty quid?”.
Oh, wait, I didn’t see your declaration that individual songs don’t count. (Whyever not?)
Really just to make it harder. As someone else pointed out on Facebook, the Wikipedia page of song titles with numbers in goes to over 100 before you reach a number with no corresponding title.
I also need 21 and 22 for those days when the pool is smaller and I do a couple of extra lengths to make up the distance.