A Dictionary of Musical Themes

The book collects 10,000 musical themes (mostly classical works) and indexes them using a notation index based on transposing the pitches to C major or C minor (so that God Save the Queen/America, for instance, would come out as CCDBCDEEFE). It was followed a year later by A Dictionary of Vocal Themes (1950), including themes from songs and opera.

Sam Morgenstern (1906-1989) was a teacher at Mannes College of Music in Greenwich Village, New York, and the conductor of Lower Manhattan's Lemonade Opera Company, which gave the US premiere of Prokofiev’s Duenna in 1948. He composed two short operas, along with Warsaw Ghetto (setting a spoken word poem by Harry Granick to background music), which premiered at Carnegie Hall on February 10, 1946. He composed a choral cantata The Common Man, and the Latin-tinged piano piece Toccata Guatemala. Although no recordings of his work exist, a radio disk transcription of the second performance of Warsaw Ghetto exists, made in the studio a week after the premiere.{{Cite web|url=https://www.wnyc.org/story/music-by-of-and-for-americans/|title=Music by, of, and for Americans. | WNYC | New York Public Radio, Podcasts, Live Streaming Radio, News|website=WNYC}} Morgenstern’s other books included the anthology Composers on Music (1956).{{Cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/30/obituaries/sam-morgenstern-composer-83.html|title=Sam Morgenstern, Composer, 83|date=December 30, 1989|via=NYTimes.com}}

Harold Barlow (1915-93) devised the notation scheme. He was a popular song composer who studied violin at Boston University and became a bandleader during World War II.{{Cite web|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-02-28-mn-267-story.html|title=Harold Barlow; Composer, Author, Plagiarism Expert|first=Myrna|last=Oliver|date=February 28, 1993|website=Los Angeles Times}} He wrote the comedy song I’ve Got Tears in My Ears in 1949 (recorded by Homer and Jethro),{{Cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faPM9prY18s|title=I've Got Tears In My Ears from Lying On My Back In Bed While I Cry Over You|via=www.youtube.com}} and the lyrics to the 1960 Connie Francis hit Mama. Barlow became better known later in his career as a consultant on plagiarism, most famously defending George Harrison’s "My Sweet Lord" against accusations that it was copied from the Chiffons’ hit He’s So Fine. (Harrison lost the case).{{Cite web|url=https://performingsongwriter.com/george-harrison-my-sweet-lord/|title=George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" Copyright Infringement Case|date=February 10, 2015}} Barlow also worked on cases involving Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Elton John, Dolly Parton, and Billy Joel.{{cite book | url=https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197551554.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780197551554-e-20 | isbn=978-0-19-755155-4 | doi=10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197551554.013.20 | chapter=Forensic Translations of Music in Copyright Litigation | title=The Oxford Handbook of Public Music Theory | date=2021 | last1=Leo | first1=Katherine M. }}

A new attempt at classifying tunes was published in 1975 by Denys Parsons. The Directory of Tunes and Musical Themes used the contours of a melody, avoiding the need for transpositions (which involves some musical knowledge). Using the letters U, D and R to denote up, down and repeat, and an asterisk for the first note, “God Save the Queen” comes out as *RUDUU URUDDD UDDU. Parsons covered around 15,000 classical, popular and folk pieces in his dictionary. In the process he found out that *UU is the most popular opening contour, used in 23% of all the themes, something that applies to all the genres.{{Cite web|url=http://ismir2003.ismir.net/papers/Uitdenbogerd.pdf|title=Uitdenbogerd, AL and Yap, Y W. Was Parsons right? An experiment in usability of music (2003)}} The book was reissued in 2008 as the Directory of Classical Themes.{{Cite book|url=https://www.littlebrown.co.uk/titles/denys-parsons/the-directory-of-classical-themes/9780749951788/|title=The Directory Of Classical Themes|date=January 29, 2019|isbn=9780749951788 |via=www.littlebrown.co.uk |last1=Parsons |first1=Denys |publisher=Little, Brown }}

Denys Parsons (1914, died circa 2000) was the grandson of actor Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree.{{Cite web|url=https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/196503/denys-parsons|title=Denys Parsons|website=www.penguin.co.uk}}{{Cite web |url=http://alanparsons.com/artists-posts/alanparsons/ |title=Alan Parsons biography |access-date=2020-05-01 |archive-date=2019-09-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190918093350/http://alanparsons.com/artists-posts/alanparsons/ |url-status=dead }} He was the father of Alan Parsons, the producer of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon and leader of the Alan Parsons Project.

Website search services employing the Barlow method{{Cite web|url=http://bestclassicaltunes.com/Default.aspx|title=The Best Music in the World|website=bestclassicaltunes.com}} and the Parsons method{{Cite web |url=https://www.musipedia.org/ |title=Musipedia.org |access-date=2020-05-01 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170307231409/http://www.musipedia.org/ |archive-date=2017-03-07 |url-status=dead }} are available. Today audio files can be plugged into music recognition services such as Audiggle, Gracenote, Shazam and SoundHound.{{Cite web|url=https://medium.com/@simonlee0306/what-is-music-recognition-software-and-how-does-it-work-5749be7eceb7|title=What is music recognition software and how does it work?|first=Simon|last=Lee|date=January 8, 2019}} Google's "Hum to Search" feature, introduced for mobile phones in 2020, uses artificial intelligence models and is based on Google's music recognition technology.{{Cite web|url=https://blog.google/products/search/hum-to-search/|title=Song stuck in your head? Just hum to search|date=October 15, 2020|website=Google}}

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Category:Encyclopedias of music

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